School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Richmond School & Sixth Form College?

In 2026/27, Richmond School & Sixth Form College offered 228 places and 189 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.

0.83

first choices for every place available

189 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Richmond School & Sixth Form College

There is no published appeal success rate for Richmond School & Sixth Form College, 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

Richmond School & Sixth Form College 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 Richmond School & Sixth Form College, 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 0.97 per place 237 first choices 245 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 215 first choices 224 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 171 first choices 195 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 175 first choices 208 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 210 first choices 226 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 180 first choices 208 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 194 first choices 218 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 173 first choices 209 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 208 first choices 231 places 2024/25 0.86 per place 186 first choices 217 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 248 first choices 243 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 189 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at Richmond School & Sixth Form College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Richmond School & Sixth Form College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 245 237 237 0.97
2016/17 224 215 215 0.96
2017/18 195 171 171 0.88
2018/19 208 175 175 0.84
2019/20 226 210 210 0.93
2020/21 208 180 180 0.87
2021/22 218 194 194 0.89
2022/23 209 173 173 0.83
2023/24 231 208 208 0.9
2024/25 217 186 186 0.86
2025/26 243 248 236 1.02
2026/27 228 189 189 0.83

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

457 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

189 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 225 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 121680.

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

1,325

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,113

84% of capacity

Unfilled places

212

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 Richmond School & Sixth Form College 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 Richmond School & Sixth Form College reported 212 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84% 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 Richmond School & Sixth Form College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,656 places 1,565 on roll 2010/11 1,669 places 1,619 on roll 2011/12 1,656 places 1,648 on roll 2012/13 1,681 places 1,589 on roll 2013/14 1,630 places 1,560 on roll 2014/15 1,649 places 1,493 on roll 2015/16 1,675 places 1,437 on roll 2016/17 1,661 places 1,450 on roll 2017/18 1,649 places 1,357 on roll 2018/19 1,649 places 1,326 on roll 2020/21 1,649 places 1,301 on roll 2021/22 1,649 places 1,289 on roll 2022/23 1,649 places 1,244 on roll 2023/24 1,645 places 1,248 on roll 2024/25 1,645 places 1,280 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 DL10 7BQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145090).

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.