School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Penwortham Girls' High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Penwortham Girls' High School as their first choice did not get a place: 159 put it first and 137 of them were offered one.

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

22

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

159 first preferences for 161 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Penwortham Girls' High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Penwortham Girls' 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

Penwortham Girls' High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Penwortham Girls' 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 0.85 per place 129 first choices 152 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 168 first choices 154 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 193 first choices 154 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 173 first choices 154 places 2019/20 1 per place 154 first choices 154 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 160 first choices 152 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 152 first choices 153 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 139 first choices 158 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 158 first choices 156 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 175 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 166 first choices 160 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 159 first choices 161 places
First preferences per place at Penwortham Girls' High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 159 first preferences for 161 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Penwortham Girls' 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
2015/16 152 129 128 0.85
2016/17 154 168 133 1.09
2017/18 154 193 141 1.25
2018/19 154 173 138 1.12
2019/20 154 154 127 1
2020/21 152 160 134 1.05
2021/22 153 152 135 0.99
2022/23 158 139 130 0.88
2023/24 156 158 130 1.01
2024/25 158 175 142 1.11
2025/26 160 166 143 1.04
2026/27 161 159 137 0.99

Places offered

161

in 2026/27

Named first choice

159

480 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.2%

137 of 159

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 161 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

800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

798

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

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 Penwortham Girls' 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 Penwortham Girls' High School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Penwortham Girls' High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 744 places 720 on roll 2010/11 744 places 714 on roll 2011/12 744 places 670 on roll 2012/13 726 places 629 on roll 2013/14 726 places 621 on roll 2014/15 743 places 674 on roll 2015/16 762 places 694 on roll 2016/17 762 places 713 on roll 2017/18 762 places 744 on roll 2018/19 762 places 774 on roll 2020/21 775 places 774 on roll 2021/22 775 places 787 on roll 2022/23 775 places 795 on roll 2023/24 800 places 800 on roll 2024/25 800 places 798 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR1 0SR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119765).

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.