School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harrogate Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 97 families who named Harrogate Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 281 and 366 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.

1.30

first choices for every place available

366 first preferences for 281 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harrogate Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Harrogate 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

Harrogate 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 Harrogate 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 1.19 per place 338 first choices 283 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 379 first choices 283 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 337 first choices 286 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 340 first choices 282 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 340 first choices 282 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 321 first choices 287 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 367 first choices 279 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 341 first choices 280 places 2023/24 1.43 per place 400 first choices 279 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 369 first choices 288 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 378 first choices 281 places 2026/27 1.3 per place 366 first choices 281 places
First preferences per place at Harrogate Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 366 first preferences for 281 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harrogate 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
2015/16 283 338 280 1.19
2016/17 283 379 278 1.34
2017/18 286 337 274 1.18
2018/19 282 340 277 1.21
2019/20 282 340 268 1.21
2020/21 287 321 265 1.12
2021/22 279 367 257 1.32
2022/23 280 341 275 1.22
2023/24 279 400 275 1.43
2024/25 288 369 286 1.28
2025/26 281 378 278 1.35
2026/27 281 366 269 1.3

Places offered

281

in 2026/27

Named first choice

366

889 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.5%

269 of 366

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 281 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

1,437

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,451

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

14

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

600

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 Harrogate 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 Harrogate 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harrogate Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,954 places 1,755 on roll 2011/12 1,954 places 1,780 on roll 2012/13 1,954 places 1,820 on roll 2013/14 1,954 places 1,824 on roll 2014/15 1,954 places 1,794 on roll 2015/16 1,948 places 1,834 on roll 2016/17 1,948 places 1,908 on roll 2017/18 1,954 places 1,919 on roll 2018/19 1,954 places 1,951 on roll 2020/21 1,954 places 2,034 on roll 2021/22 1,954 places 2,081 on roll 2022/23 2,037 places 2,111 on roll 2023/24 2,037 places 2,089 on roll 2024/25 2,037 places 2,067 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode HG2 0DZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136497).

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.