School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Skipton Girls' High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 61 families who named Skipton Girls' High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 180 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

180 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Skipton Girls' High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Skipton Girls' 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

Skipton Girls' High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Skipton Girls' 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 1.1 per place 125 first choices 114 places 2016/17 1.26 per place 146 first choices 116 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 152 first choices 137 places 2018/19 1 per place 144 first choices 144 places 2019/20 1.49 per place 171 first choices 115 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 154 first choices 116 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 149 first choices 116 places 2022/23 1.31 per place 152 first choices 116 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 178 first choices 144 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 119 first choices 98 places 2025/26 1.45 per place 173 first choices 119 places 2026/27 1.5 per place 180 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Skipton Girls' High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Skipton Girls' 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
2015/16 114 125 114 1.1
2016/17 116 146 115 1.26
2017/18 137 152 135 1.11
2018/19 144 144 141 1
2019/20 115 171 115 1.49
2020/21 116 154 116 1.33
2021/22 116 149 115 1.28
2022/23 116 152 114 1.31
2023/24 144 178 144 1.24
2024/25 98 119 97 1.21
2025/26 119 173 119 1.45
2026/27 120 180 119 1.5

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

245 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.1%

119 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

43%

51 of 120 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

563

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

631

112.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

68

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

284

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 Skipton Girls' 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 Skipton Girls' High 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 Skipton Girls' High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 746 places 794 on roll 2011/12 744 places 797 on roll 2012/13 744 places 807 on roll 2013/14 744 places 784 on roll 2014/15 744 places 795 on roll 2015/16 749 places 806 on roll 2016/17 749 places 809 on roll 2017/18 744 places 856 on roll 2018/19 744 places 885 on roll 2020/21 744 places 872 on roll 2021/22 744 places 875 on roll 2022/23 847 places 886 on roll 2023/24 847 places 881 on roll 2024/25 847 places 854 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode BD23 1QL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136664).

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.