School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ripon Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Ripon Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 110 and 165 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.

1.50

first choices for every place available

165 first preferences for 110 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ripon Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ripon 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

Ripon 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 Ripon 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 1.09 per place 128 first choices 117 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 128 first choices 117 places 2017/18 1.33 per place 154 first choices 116 places 2018/19 1.18 per place 137 first choices 116 places 2019/20 1.34 per place 154 first choices 115 places 2020/21 1.18 per place 137 first choices 116 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 158 first choices 114 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 126 first choices 116 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 162 first choices 117 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 169 first choices 114 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 147 first choices 111 places 2026/27 1.5 per place 165 first choices 110 places
First preferences per place at Ripon Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 165 first preferences for 110 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ripon 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
2015/16 117 128 116 1.09
2016/17 117 128 114 1.09
2017/18 116 154 113 1.33
2018/19 116 137 113 1.18
2019/20 115 154 115 1.34
2020/21 116 137 113 1.18
2021/22 114 158 111 1.39
2022/23 116 126 115 1.09
2023/24 117 162 111 1.38
2024/25 114 169 112 1.48
2025/26 111 147 111 1.32
2026/27 110 165 109 1.5

Places offered

110

in 2026/27

Named first choice

165

235 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.1%

109 of 165

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 110 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

630

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

624

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

301

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 Ripon 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 Ripon Grammar School reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Ripon Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 907 places 842 on roll 2010/11 907 places 855 on roll 2011/12 907 places 851 on roll 2012/13 907 places 848 on roll 2013/14 936 places 859 on roll 2014/15 936 places 859 on roll 2015/16 932 places 889 on roll 2016/17 932 places 919 on roll 2017/18 913 places 931 on roll 2018/19 916 places 928 on roll 2020/21 916 places 928 on roll 2021/22 931 places 928 on roll 2022/23 931 places 917 on roll 2023/24 931 places 921 on roll 2024/25 931 places 940 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode HG4 2DG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121694).

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.