School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dinnington High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Dinnington High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 197 and 204 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

204 first preferences for 197 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dinnington High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dinnington High 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 Rotherham 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 Rotherham, 50.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 232 of 460 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 Rotherham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rotherham 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

Dinnington High School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Dinnington High 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 0.97 per place 159 first choices 164 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 182 first choices 184 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 183 first choices 189 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 151 first choices 169 places 2019/20 0.67 per place 114 first choices 171 places 2020/21 0.64 per place 110 first choices 172 places 2021/22 0.68 per place 128 first choices 187 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 167 first choices 188 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 148 first choices 185 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 165 first choices 182 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 159 first choices 193 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 204 first choices 197 places
First preferences per place at Dinnington High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 204 first preferences for 197 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dinnington High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 164 159 159 0.97
2016/17 184 182 182 0.99
2017/18 189 183 183 0.97
2018/19 169 151 151 0.89
2019/20 171 114 114 0.67
2020/21 172 110 110 0.64
2021/22 187 128 128 0.68
2022/23 188 167 167 0.89
2023/24 185 148 148 0.8
2024/25 182 165 165 0.91
2025/26 193 159 159 0.82
2026/27 197 204 196 1.04

Places offered

197

in 2026/27

Named first choice

204

272 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.1%

196 of 204

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 197 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 references 106958, 141730.

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

1,128

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

932

82.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

196

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

252

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 Dinnington High 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 Dinnington High School reported 196 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.6% 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 Dinnington High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,444 places 1,397 on roll 2010/11 1,444 places 1,336 on roll 2011/12 1,444 places 1,321 on roll 2012/13 1,444 places 1,228 on roll 2013/14 1,444 places 1,217 on roll 2014/15 1,444 places 1,202 on roll 2015/16 1,444 places 1,135 on roll 2016/17 1,444 places 1,049 on roll 2017/18 1,444 places 1,032 on roll 2018/19 1,444 places 977 on roll 2020/21 1,444 places 976 on roll 2021/22 1,444 places 976 on roll 2022/23 1,444 places 991 on roll 2023/24 1,444 places 996 on roll 2024/25 1,380 places 1,005 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
Rotherham

Postcode S25 2NZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150938).

Other contested secondary schools in Rotherham

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.