School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Tadcaster Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Tadcaster Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 254 and 256 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.

1.01

first choices for every place available

256 first preferences for 254 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Tadcaster Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Tadcaster 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

Tadcaster Grammar School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Tadcaster 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 1.1 per place 285 first choices 260 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 289 first choices 259 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 294 first choices 257 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 258 first choices 261 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 272 first choices 261 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 273 first choices 259 places 2021/22 1 per place 254 first choices 255 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 271 first choices 258 places 2023/24 1.08 per place 281 first choices 259 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 279 first choices 249 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 266 first choices 256 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 256 first choices 254 places
First preferences per place at Tadcaster Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 256 first preferences for 254 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Tadcaster 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
2015/16 260 285 254 1.1
2016/17 259 289 256 1.12
2017/18 257 294 252 1.14
2018/19 261 258 252 0.99
2019/20 261 272 251 1.04
2020/21 259 273 248 1.05
2021/22 255 254 249 1
2022/23 258 271 254 1.05
2023/24 259 281 254 1.08
2024/25 249 279 245 1.12
2025/26 256 266 244 1.04
2026/27 254 256 247 1.01

Places offered

254

in 2026/27

Named first choice

256

581 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.5%

247 of 256

Offers to families outside the council

56%

141 of 254 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 121693.

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

1,314

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,290

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Tadcaster 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 Tadcaster Grammar School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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 Tadcaster Grammar School 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 1,633 places 1,599 on roll 2010/11 1,633 places 1,580 on roll 2011/12 1,627 places 1,574 on roll 2012/13 1,645 places 1,569 on roll 2013/14 1,614 places 1,556 on roll 2014/15 1,614 places 1,552 on roll 2015/16 1,614 places 1,535 on roll 2016/17 1,614 places 1,503 on roll 2017/18 1,614 places 1,515 on roll 2018/19 1,614 places 1,516 on roll 2020/21 1,614 places 1,496 on roll 2021/22 1,614 places 1,508 on roll 2022/23 1,614 places 1,512 on roll 2023/24 1,614 places 1,506 on roll 2024/25 1,614 places 1,496 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 LS24 9NB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145777).

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.