School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Preston Muslim Girls High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Preston Muslim Girls High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 141 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

141 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Preston Muslim Girls High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Preston Muslim 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

Preston Muslim Girls High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Preston Muslim 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 1.3 per place 105 first choices 81 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 86 first choices 100 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 124 first choices 99 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 94 first choices 100 places 2019/20 1.38 per place 141 first choices 102 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 122 first choices 120 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 136 first choices 120 places 2022/23 1.47 per place 173 first choices 118 places 2023/24 1.4 per place 168 first choices 120 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 136 first choices 116 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 163 first choices 119 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 141 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Preston Muslim Girls High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 141 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Preston Muslim 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 81 105 79 1.3
2016/17 100 86 86 0.86
2017/18 99 124 93 1.25
2018/19 100 94 91 0.94
2019/20 102 141 101 1.38
2020/21 120 122 117 1.02
2021/22 120 136 114 1.13
2022/23 118 173 116 1.47
2023/24 120 168 116 1.4
2024/25 116 136 114 1.17
2025/26 119 163 114 1.37
2026/27 120 141 117 1.18

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

141

208 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83%

117 of 141

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 120 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Preston Muslim Girls High School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Preston Muslim Girls High School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after girls who were previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements or a special guardianship order or those girls who appear to the school to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. (See note 1)
2 Daughters of staff employed at PMGHS for TWO or more years at the time when the application is made and is still employed at the time of admission. Also, daughters of members of staff who have been recruited to fill a post where there is a demonstrable skill shortage. This applies to all staff (full and part time) who are employed by the school. Applications under this category must fill the school’s SIF. (See note 2)
3 Girls with a sibling who is a pupil attending PMGHS at the time of application. Applications under this category must fill the school’s SIF. (See note 3)
4 Girls who attend our affiliated primary school - The Olive School Preston. Applications under this category must fill the school’s SIF. (See note 4)
5 Muslim girls who have exceptionally strong special, medical or social circumstances, which are directly relevant to attendance at PMGHS. Applications under this category must fill the school’s SIF. (See note 5)
6 Muslim girls who themselves or their parents regularly attend a Masjid/Madrasah from the list below, showing a commitment to faith. Applications under this category must fill the school’s SIF. (See

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Preston Muslim Girls High School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

589

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

609

103.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

20

reported as full or beyond

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 Preston Muslim 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 Preston Muslim Girls High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Preston Muslim Girls High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 447 places 236 on roll 2012/13 387 places 271 on roll 2013/14 432 places 323 on roll 2014/15 408 places 367 on roll 2015/16 408 places 400 on roll 2016/17 465 places 443 on roll 2017/18 500 places 479 on roll 2018/19 500 places 500 on roll 2020/21 510 places 540 on roll 2021/22 589 places 562 on roll 2022/23 589 places 580 on roll 2023/24 589 places 599 on roll 2024/25 589 places 609 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR1 5BY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136801).

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.