School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Laurence Jackson School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Laurence Jackson School as their first choice did not get a place: 241 put it first and 234 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

241 first preferences for 248 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Laurence Jackson School

There is no published appeal success rate for Laurence Jackson 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 Redcar and Cleveland 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 Redcar and Cleveland, 17.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 117 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 Redcar and Cleveland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Redcar and Cleveland 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

Laurence Jackson School turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Laurence Jackson 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 0.94 per place 233 first choices 249 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 215 first choices 245 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 272 first choices 254 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 304 first choices 246 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 286 first choices 241 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 223 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 225 first choices 241 places 2022/23 1 per place 245 first choices 244 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 278 first choices 272 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 228 first choices 246 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 306 first choices 259 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 241 first choices 248 places
First preferences per place at Laurence Jackson School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 241 first preferences for 248 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Laurence Jackson School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 249 233 231 0.94
2016/17 245 215 215 0.88
2017/18 254 272 245 1.07
2018/19 246 304 240 1.24
2019/20 241 286 234 1.19
2020/21 238 223 223 0.94
2021/22 241 225 224 0.93
2022/23 244 245 231 1
2023/24 272 278 268 1.02
2024/25 246 228 227 0.93
2025/26 259 306 258 1.18
2026/27 248 241 234 0.97

Places offered

248

in 2026/27

Named first choice

241

376 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.1%

234 of 241

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 248 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 111724.

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

1,243

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,234

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

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 Laurence Jackson 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 Laurence Jackson School reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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 Laurence Jackson School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,548 places 1,409 on roll 2010/11 1,548 places 1,335 on roll 2011/12 1,449 places 1,262 on roll 2012/13 1,449 places 1,230 on roll 2013/14 1,449 places 1,233 on roll 2014/15 1,449 places 1,223 on roll 2015/16 1,297 places 1,193 on roll 2016/17 1,297 places 1,199 on roll 2017/18 1,297 places 1,199 on roll 2018/19 1,243 places 1,209 on roll 2020/21 1,243 places 1,215 on roll 2021/22 1,243 places 1,207 on roll 2022/23 1,243 places 1,208 on roll 2023/24 1,243 places 1,241 on roll 2024/25 1,243 places 1,234 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Laurence Jackson School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Laurence Jackson School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 October 2013 No fault found VAR610

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Redcar and Cleveland

Postcode TS14 6RD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147724).

Other contested secondary schools in Redcar and Cleveland

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.