School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Hollins?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Hollins as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 152 and 153 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

153 first preferences for 152 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Hollins

There is no published appeal success rate for The Hollins, 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

The Hollins 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 The Hollins, 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 1.17 per place 185 first choices 158 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 217 first choices 158 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 198 first choices 157 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 165 first choices 158 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 172 first choices 159 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 198 first choices 157 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 175 first choices 157 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 205 first choices 162 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 167 first choices 157 places 2024/25 1.39 per place 219 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 164 first choices 158 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 153 first choices 152 places
First preferences per place at The Hollins. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 153 first preferences for 152 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Hollins, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 185 134 1.17
2016/17 158 217 142 1.37
2017/18 157 198 132 1.26
2018/19 158 165 130 1.04
2019/20 159 172 133 1.08
2020/21 157 198 123 1.26
2021/22 157 175 137 1.11
2022/23 162 205 148 1.27
2023/24 157 167 153 1.06
2024/25 158 219 148 1.39
2025/26 158 164 156 1.04
2026/27 152 153 134 1.01

Places offered

152

in 2026/27

Named first choice

153

501 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.6%

134 of 153

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 152 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 119757.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Hollins published for 2026 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 The Hollins, 2026 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 children or a child who was previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order, or special guardianship order or those children 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, then,
2 children for whom the Trust accepts that there are exceptional medical, social or welfare reasons which are directly relevant to the school concerned, then,
3 children living within the school’s geographical priority area with older brothers or sisters attending the school when the younger child will start, then,
4 children living within the school’s geographical priority area who attend Huncoat Primary School or West End Primary School, part of the LET Education Trust, then,
5 children of staff working at The Hollins, then,
6 children living within the school’s geographical priority area, then,
7 children living outside the school’s geographical priority area with older brothers or sisters still attending the school when the younger child will start, then,
8 children living outside the school’s geographical priority area who attend Huncoat Primary School or West End Primary School, part of the LET Education Trust, then,
9 children living outside the school’s geographical priority area below. Our priority area is Accrington (South) including Baxenden and Huncoat.

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 2026 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.

The Hollins's determined admission arrangements for 2026 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

800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

797

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

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 The Hollins 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 The Hollins reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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 The Hollins from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 824 places 751 on roll 2010/11 807 places 748 on roll 2011/12 807 places 755 on roll 2012/13 807 places 777 on roll 2013/14 807 places 784 on roll 2014/15 800 places 779 on roll 2015/16 800 places 778 on roll 2016/17 800 places 789 on roll 2017/18 800 places 795 on roll 2018/19 800 places 800 on roll 2020/21 800 places 814 on roll 2021/22 800 places 803 on roll 2022/23 800 places 803 on roll 2023/24 800 places 789 on roll 2024/25 800 places 797 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 BB5 2QY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148922).

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.