School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Pudsey Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 75 families who named Pudsey Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 214 and 287 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

287 first preferences for 214 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Pudsey Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Pudsey Grammar 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

Pudsey Grammar School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Pudsey Grammar 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 1.29 per place 251 first choices 194 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 244 first choices 195 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 184 first choices 225 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 222 first choices 226 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 160 first choices 199 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 316 first choices 238 places 2021/22 1.43 per place 304 first choices 213 places 2022/23 1.45 per place 325 first choices 224 places 2023/24 1.55 per place 345 first choices 222 places 2024/25 1.55 per place 348 first choices 224 places 2025/26 1.58 per place 351 first choices 222 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 287 first choices 214 places
First preferences per place at Pudsey Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 287 first preferences for 214 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Pudsey Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 194 251 191 1.29
2016/17 195 244 190 1.25
2017/18 225 184 184 0.82
2018/19 226 222 208 0.98
2019/20 199 160 160 0.8
2020/21 238 316 233 1.33
2021/22 213 304 205 1.43
2022/23 224 325 218 1.45
2023/24 222 345 218 1.55
2024/25 224 348 219 1.55
2025/26 222 351 220 1.58
2026/27 214 287 212 1.34

Places offered

214

in 2026/27

Named first choice

287

851 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.9%

212 of 287

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 214 offers

How close you had to live

Pudsey Grammar School filled its places in 2026, and 1,625m — 1.01 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

1.01 mi

1,625 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

1,147

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,111

96.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

36

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

190

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 Pudsey Grammar 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 Pudsey Grammar School reported 36 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.9% 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 Pudsey Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,218 places 1,126 on roll 2010/11 1,218 places 1,144 on roll 2011/12 1,218 places 1,151 on roll 2012/13 1,268 places 1,168 on roll 2013/14 1,268 places 1,184 on roll 2014/15 1,268 places 1,201 on roll 2015/16 1,268 places 1,163 on roll 2016/17 1,268 places 1,163 on roll 2017/18 1,268 places 1,137 on roll 2018/19 1,268 places 1,191 on roll 2020/21 1,268 places 1,314 on roll 2021/22 1,268 places 1,337 on roll 2022/23 1,268 places 1,322 on roll 2023/24 1,268 places 1,310 on roll 2024/25 1,337 places 1,358 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leeds

Postcode LS28 7ND. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108079).

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.