School admission appeals in Redcar and Cleveland
Redcar and Cleveland heard 36 school admission appeals in 2025, and 6 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Redcar and Cleveland as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Redcar and Cleveland success rate has run 3 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.8%.
of appeals heard in Redcar and Cleveland were upheld
23 of 137 appeals heard in 2023–2025
2025 at a glance
Appeals lodged
57
by parents in Redcar and Cleveland
Appeals heard by a panel
36
63% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
6
16.7% of those heard
England, same year
19.4%
7,498 of 38,639 heard
Which appeals succeed in Redcar and Cleveland
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 131 | 22 | 16.8% | 20.5% |
| Primary | 6 | 1 | too few | 17.4% |
| Infant class size | 0 | 0 | too few | 9.8% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Ten years of appeals in Redcar and Cleveland
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Redcar and Cleveland | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 80 | 16 | 20% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 86 | 21 | 24.4% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 67 | 28 | 41.8% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 97 | 23 | 23.7% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 85 | 17 | 20% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 26 | 7 | 26.9% | 19% |
| 2022 | 41 | 15 | 36.6% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 61 | 10 | 16.4% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 40 | 7 | 17.5% | 20% |
| 2025 | 36 | 6 | 16.7% | 19.4% |
How Redcar and Cleveland compares
Success rate ranking
90 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
144 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 137 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Redcar and Cleveland
Redcar and Cleveland has 54 state-funded mainstream schools — 44 primary and 10 secondary. The largest concentrations are in Redcar, Middlesbrough, Saltburn-by-the-Sea and Guisborough.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.