School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ermysted's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named Ermysted's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 127 and 181 put it first.

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

1.43

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 127 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ermysted's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ermysted's 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 North Yorkshire 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 North Yorkshire, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 87 of 411 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 North Yorkshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Yorkshire 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

Ermysted's Grammar 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 Ermysted's 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 1.18 per place 131 first choices 111 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 136 first choices 109 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 125 first choices 106 places 2018/19 1.43 per place 171 first choices 120 places 2019/20 1.18 per place 142 first choices 120 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 158 first choices 128 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 146 first choices 120 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 137 first choices 123 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 145 first choices 120 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 139 first choices 127 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 140 first choices 117 places 2026/27 1.43 per place 181 first choices 127 places
First preferences per place at Ermysted's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 127 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ermysted's 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
2015/16 111 131 111 1.18
2016/17 109 136 109 1.25
2017/18 106 125 106 1.18
2018/19 120 171 120 1.43
2019/20 120 142 120 1.18
2020/21 128 158 127 1.23
2021/22 120 146 118 1.22
2022/23 123 137 122 1.11
2023/24 120 145 118 1.21
2024/25 127 139 123 1.09
2025/26 117 140 115 1.2
2026/27 127 181 126 1.43

Places offered

127

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

228 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.6%

126 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

54%

69 of 127 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

570

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

635

111.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

65

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

298

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 Ermysted's 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 Ermysted's Grammar 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 Ermysted's Grammar School 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 2009/10 810 places 792 on roll 2010/11 834 places 800 on roll 2011/12 839 places 793 on roll 2012/13 834 places 793 on roll 2013/14 844 places 805 on roll 2014/15 844 places 786 on roll 2015/16 844 places 814 on roll 2016/17 844 places 811 on roll 2017/18 896 places 829 on roll 2018/19 896 places 816 on roll 2020/21 876 places 826 on roll 2021/22 871 places 839 on roll 2022/23 871 places 840 on roll 2023/24 868 places 827 on roll 2024/25 868 places 821 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode BD23 1PL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121716).

Other contested secondary schools in North Yorkshire

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.