School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lift Unity City?

In 2026/27, Lift Unity City offered 196 places and 175 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.89

first choices for every place available

175 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lift Unity City

There is no published appeal success rate for Lift Unity City, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Middlesbrough 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 Middlesbrough, 10.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 34 of 318 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 Middlesbrough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Middlesbrough 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

Lift Unity City turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Lift Unity City, 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 0.64 per place 104 first choices 163 places 2016/17 0.7 per place 128 first choices 184 places 2017/18 0.54 per place 90 first choices 168 places 2018/19 0.57 per place 107 first choices 188 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 121 first choices 208 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 160 first choices 202 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 146 first choices 202 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 174 first choices 204 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 207 first choices 245 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 203 first choices 249 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 219 first choices 203 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 175 first choices 196 places
First preferences per place at Lift Unity City. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 196 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lift Unity City, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 163 104 104 0.64
2016/17 184 128 128 0.7
2017/18 168 90 90 0.54
2018/19 188 107 107 0.57
2019/20 208 121 121 0.58
2020/21 202 160 160 0.79
2021/22 202 146 146 0.72
2022/23 204 174 174 0.85
2023/24 245 207 207 0.84
2024/25 249 203 203 0.82
2025/26 203 219 192 1.08
2026/27 196 175 175 0.89

Places offered

196

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

291 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

175 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 188 offers

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,009

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

41

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 Lift Unity City 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 Lift Unity City reported 41 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 Lift Unity City from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 734 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 670 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 698 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 703 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 673 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 617 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 626 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 638 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 657 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 707 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 778 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 844 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 914 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 988 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,009 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Middlesbrough

Postcode TS3 8RE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 133768).

Other contested secondary schools in Middlesbrough

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.