School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Aidan's Church of England High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 104 families who named St Aidan's Church of England High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 248 and 339 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.

1.37

first choices for every place available

339 first preferences for 248 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Aidan's Church of England High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Aidan's Church of England 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

St Aidan's Church of England 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 St Aidan's Church of England 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 1.01 per place 259 first choices 256 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 282 first choices 248 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 325 first choices 275 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 310 first choices 279 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 359 first choices 246 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 332 first choices 245 places 2021/22 1.43 per place 345 first choices 242 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 303 first choices 284 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 260 first choices 244 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 256 first choices 272 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 298 first choices 270 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 339 first choices 248 places
First preferences per place at St Aidan's Church of England High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 339 first preferences for 248 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Aidan's Church of England 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
2015/16 256 259 245 1.01
2016/17 248 282 241 1.14
2017/18 275 325 271 1.18
2018/19 279 310 267 1.11
2019/20 246 359 240 1.46
2020/21 245 332 239 1.36
2021/22 242 345 233 1.43
2022/23 284 303 278 1.07
2023/24 244 260 224 1.07
2024/25 272 256 249 0.94
2025/26 270 298 249 1.1
2026/27 248 339 235 1.37

Places offered

248

in 2026/27

Named first choice

339

930 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.3%

235 of 339

Offers to families outside the council

2%

6 of 248 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

1,235

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,315

106.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

80

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

820

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 St Aidan's Church of England 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 St Aidan's Church of England 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Aidan's Church of England High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,993 places 1,940 on roll 2012/13 1,993 places 1,954 on roll 2013/14 2,029 places 1,974 on roll 2014/15 2,029 places 1,923 on roll 2015/16 2,029 places 1,925 on roll 2016/17 1,968 places 1,903 on roll 2017/18 1,903 places 1,943 on roll 2018/19 1,903 places 1,965 on roll 2020/21 1,903 places 1,992 on roll 2021/22 1,903 places 1,974 on roll 2022/23 1,903 places 2,001 on roll 2023/24 2,055 places 2,056 on roll 2024/25 2,055 places 2,026 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode HG2 8JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137139).

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.