School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Guiseley School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Guiseley School as their first choice did not get a place: 221 put it first and 196 of them were offered one.

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

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

221 first preferences for 227 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Guiseley School

There is no published appeal success rate for Guiseley 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

Guiseley School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 1 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 Guiseley 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 1.04 per place 233 first choices 225 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 263 first choices 239 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 230 first choices 238 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 208 first choices 238 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 190 first choices 239 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 188 first choices 237 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 202 first choices 237 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 217 first choices 237 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 261 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 264 first choices 232 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 305 first choices 238 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 221 first choices 227 places
First preferences per place at Guiseley School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 221 first preferences for 227 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Guiseley School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 233 214 1.04
2016/17 239 263 223 1.1
2017/18 238 230 223 0.97
2018/19 238 208 205 0.87
2019/20 239 190 189 0.79
2020/21 237 188 188 0.79
2021/22 237 202 199 0.85
2022/23 237 217 212 0.92
2023/24 233 261 226 1.12
2024/25 232 264 220 1.14
2025/26 238 305 230 1.28
2026/27 227 221 196 0.97

Places offered

227

in 2026/27

Named first choice

221

868 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.7%

196 of 221

Offers to families outside the council

27%

61 of 227 offers

How close you had to live

Guiseley School filled its places in 2026, and 3,991m — 2.48 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 — Any other children, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.48 mi

3,991 metres, 2026

Under criterion

4

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

1,147

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,182

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Guiseley 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 Guiseley 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Guiseley School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,354 places 1,335 on roll 2010/11 1,328 places 1,358 on roll 2011/12 1,328 places 1,350 on roll 2012/13 1,359 places 1,312 on roll 2013/14 1,359 places 1,300 on roll 2014/15 1,359 places 1,326 on roll 2015/16 1,359 places 1,325 on roll 2016/17 1,359 places 1,367 on roll 2017/18 1,440 places 1,358 on roll 2018/19 1,440 places 1,318 on roll 2020/21 1,440 places 1,346 on roll 2021/22 1,440 places 1,364 on roll 2022/23 1,440 places 1,388 on roll 2023/24 1,440 places 1,405 on roll 2024/25 1,387 places 1,424 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Guiseley School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Guiseley School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 October 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3870

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leeds

Postcode LS20 8DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108085).

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.