School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Nidderdale High School?

In 2026/27, Nidderdale High School offered 70 places and 51 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.73

first choices for every place available

51 first preferences for 70 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Nidderdale High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Nidderdale High 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

Nidderdale High School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Nidderdale High 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 0.87 per place 48 first choices 55 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 69 first choices 91 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 74 first choices 91 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 64 first choices 71 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 85 first choices 82 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 73 first choices 80 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 74 first choices 86 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 73 first choices 77 places 2023/24 0.89 per place 71 first choices 80 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 72 first choices 77 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 82 first choices 81 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 51 first choices 70 places
First preferences per place at Nidderdale High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 51 first preferences for 70 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Nidderdale High 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 55 48 48 0.87
2016/17 91 69 69 0.76
2017/18 91 74 74 0.81
2018/19 71 64 64 0.9
2019/20 82 85 71 1.04
2020/21 80 73 73 0.91
2021/22 86 74 74 0.86
2022/23 77 73 73 0.95
2023/24 80 71 70 0.89
2024/25 77 72 71 0.94
2025/26 81 82 77 1.01
2026/27 70 51 51 0.73

Places offered

70

in 2026/27

Named first choice

51

133 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

51 of 51

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 66 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 121700.

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

441

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

390

88.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

51

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 Nidderdale High 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 Nidderdale High School reported 51 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.4% 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 Nidderdale High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 250 500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 470 places 442 on roll 2010/11 470 places 421 on roll 2011/12 470 places 385 on roll 2012/13 470 places 351 on roll 2013/14 470 places 297 on roll 2014/15 470 places 295 on roll 2015/16 475 places 288 on roll 2016/17 470 places 307 on roll 2017/18 470 places 350 on roll 2018/19 470 places 367 on roll 2020/21 441 places 391 on roll 2021/22 441 places 399 on roll 2022/23 441 places 390 on roll 2023/24 441 places 402 on roll 2024/25 441 places 390 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 HG3 5HL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149987).

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.