School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Parklands High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 48 families who named Parklands High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 215 and 239 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Lancashire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.11

first choices for every place available

239 first preferences for 215 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Parklands High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Parklands High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Lancashire as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Lancashire, 28.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 768 of 2,706 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Lancashire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lancashire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Parklands High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Parklands High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.08 per place 237 first choices 219 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 261 first choices 220 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 225 first choices 220 places 2018/19 1.08 per place 237 first choices 220 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 236 first choices 224 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 251 first choices 218 places 2021/22 1.1 per place 248 first choices 226 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 254 first choices 223 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 263 first choices 230 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 258 first choices 218 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 253 first choices 214 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 239 first choices 215 places
First preferences per place at Parklands High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 239 first preferences for 215 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Parklands High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 219 237 188 1.08
2016/17 220 261 205 1.19
2017/18 220 225 203 1.02
2018/19 220 237 194 1.08
2019/20 224 236 204 1.05
2020/21 218 251 195 1.15
2021/22 226 248 201 1.1
2022/23 223 254 193 1.14
2023/24 230 263 197 1.14
2024/25 218 258 191 1.18
2025/26 214 253 199 1.18
2026/27 215 239 191 1.11

Places offered

215

in 2026/27

Named first choice

239

765 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.9%

191 of 239

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 215 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,116

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,092

97.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Parklands High School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Parklands High School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.8% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Parklands High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,116 places 1,061 on roll 2013/14 1,116 places 1,053 on roll 2014/15 1,116 places 1,022 on roll 2015/16 1,116 places 1,053 on roll 2016/17 1,116 places 1,061 on roll 2017/18 1,116 places 1,066 on roll 2018/19 1,116 places 1,089 on roll 2020/21 1,116 places 1,101 on roll 2021/22 1,116 places 1,091 on roll 2022/23 1,116 places 1,104 on roll 2023/24 1,116 places 1,113 on roll 2024/25 1,116 places 1,092 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR7 1LL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138647).

Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.