School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Upper Wharfedale School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named Upper Wharfedale School as their first choice did not get a place: 65 put it first and 59 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in North Yorkshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

6

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

65 first preferences for 66 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Upper Wharfedale School

There is no published appeal success rate for Upper Wharfedale 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

Upper Wharfedale 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 Upper Wharfedale 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 1.02 per place 55 first choices 54 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 62 first choices 54 places 2017/18 1.36 per place 75 first choices 55 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 67 first choices 55 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 81 first choices 67 places 2020/21 1.54 per place 103 first choices 67 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 83 first choices 69 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 88 first choices 70 places 2023/24 1.33 per place 85 first choices 64 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 75 first choices 66 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 76 first choices 66 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 65 first choices 66 places
First preferences per place at Upper Wharfedale School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 65 first preferences for 66 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Upper Wharfedale 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 54 55 51 1.02
2016/17 54 62 49 1.15
2017/18 55 75 51 1.36
2018/19 55 67 55 1.22
2019/20 67 81 63 1.21
2020/21 67 103 67 1.54
2021/22 69 83 66 1.2
2022/23 70 88 68 1.26
2023/24 64 85 59 1.33
2024/25 66 75 60 1.14
2025/26 66 76 59 1.15
2026/27 66 65 59 0.98

Places offered

66

in 2026/27

Named first choice

65

241 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.8%

59 of 65

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 66 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

388

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

361

93% of capacity

Unfilled places

27

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Upper Wharfedale 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 Upper Wharfedale School reported 27 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93% 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 Upper Wharfedale School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 250 500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 350 places 284 on roll 2010/11 369 places 291 on roll 2011/12 350 places 290 on roll 2012/13 369 places 293 on roll 2013/14 369 places 296 on roll 2014/15 350 places 292 on roll 2015/16 405 places 293 on roll 2016/17 405 places 289 on roll 2017/18 385 places 284 on roll 2018/19 388 places 299 on roll 2020/21 388 places 336 on roll 2021/22 388 places 346 on roll 2022/23 388 places 358 on roll 2023/24 388 places 367 on roll 2024/25 388 places 361 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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Yorkshire

Postcode BD23 5BS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121690).

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.