School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Allerton High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 67 families who named Allerton High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 271 and 326 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

326 first preferences for 271 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Allerton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Allerton 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 Leeds 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 Leeds, 17.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 288 of 1,685 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 Leeds.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Leeds 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

Allerton 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 Allerton 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 1.17 per place 223 first choices 191 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 256 first choices 219 places 2017/18 1.34 per place 294 first choices 219 places 2018/19 1.4 per place 303 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 314 first choices 218 places 2020/21 1.82 per place 392 first choices 215 places 2021/22 1.78 per place 387 first choices 218 places 2022/23 1.45 per place 396 first choices 274 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 380 first choices 275 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 346 first choices 274 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 349 first choices 278 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 326 first choices 271 places
First preferences per place at Allerton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 326 first preferences for 271 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Allerton 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
2015/16 191 223 175 1.17
2016/17 219 256 199 1.17
2017/18 219 294 209 1.34
2018/19 216 303 205 1.4
2019/20 218 314 207 1.44
2020/21 215 392 208 1.82
2021/22 218 387 212 1.78
2022/23 274 396 269 1.45
2023/24 275 380 268 1.38
2024/25 274 346 260 1.26
2025/26 278 349 259 1.26
2026/27 271 326 259 1.2

Places offered

271

in 2026/27

Named first choice

326

1,347 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

259 of 326

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 271 offers

How close you had to live

Allerton High School filled its places in 2026, and 1,476m — 0.92 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 — Any other children, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.92 mi

1,476 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

Any other children

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Leeds Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,400

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,346

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

54

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Allerton 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 Allerton High School reported 54 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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 Allerton High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,130 places 1,130 on roll 2010/11 1,051 places 1,116 on roll 2011/12 1,051 places 1,143 on roll 2012/13 1,150 places 1,149 on roll 2013/14 1,238 places 1,142 on roll 2014/15 1,238 places 1,198 on roll 2015/16 1,238 places 1,279 on roll 2016/17 1,238 places 1,313 on roll 2017/18 1,306 places 1,354 on roll 2018/19 1,306 places 1,393 on roll 2020/21 1,461 places 1,498 on roll 2021/22 1,530 places 1,540 on roll 2022/23 1,800 places 1,605 on roll 2023/24 1,800 places 1,642 on roll 2024/25 1,800 places 1,689 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
Leeds

Postcode LS17 7AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108057).

Other contested secondary schools in Leeds

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.