School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wensleydale School?

In 2026/27, Wensleydale School offered 83 places and 77 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.93

first choices for every place available

77 first preferences for 83 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wensleydale School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wensleydale 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

Wensleydale School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Wensleydale 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 0.96 per place 69 first choices 72 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 52 first choices 53 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 44 first choices 50 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 60 first choices 62 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 67 first choices 71 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 52 first choices 55 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 49 first choices 53 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 57 first choices 60 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 45 first choices 49 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 87 first choices 83 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 95 first choices 80 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 77 first choices 83 places
First preferences per place at Wensleydale School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 77 first preferences for 83 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wensleydale 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 72 69 69 0.96
2016/17 53 52 52 0.98
2017/18 50 44 44 0.88
2018/19 62 60 60 0.97
2019/20 71 67 67 0.94
2020/21 55 52 52 0.95
2021/22 53 49 49 0.92
2022/23 60 57 56 0.95
2023/24 49 45 45 0.92
2024/25 83 87 81 1.05
2025/26 80 95 79 1.19
2026/27 83 77 77 0.93

Places offered

83

in 2026/27

Named first choice

77

184 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

77 of 77

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 82 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

492

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

390

79.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

102

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 Wensleydale 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 Wensleydale School reported 102 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.3% 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 Wensleydale School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 528 places 484 on roll 2010/11 530 places 484 on roll 2011/12 523 places 479 on roll 2012/13 523 places 512 on roll 2013/14 542 places 502 on roll 2014/15 576 places 468 on roll 2015/16 540 places 448 on roll 2016/17 540 places 428 on roll 2017/18 539 places 393 on roll 2018/19 492 places 385 on roll 2020/21 492 places 322 on roll 2021/22 492 places 333 on roll 2022/23 492 places 352 on roll 2023/24 492 places 366 on roll 2024/25 492 places 390 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 DL8 5HY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121679).

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.