School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at High Storrs School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 60 families who named High Storrs School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 244 and 302 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

302 first preferences for 244 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at High Storrs School

There is no published appeal success rate for High Storrs 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 Sheffield 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 Sheffield, 26.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 181 of 672 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 Sheffield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sheffield 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

High Storrs 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 High Storrs 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 1.13 per place 271 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 285 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 260 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 281 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 267 first choices 248 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 228 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 259 first choices 234 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 267 first choices 243 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 271 first choices 244 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 277 first choices 243 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 283 first choices 244 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 302 first choices 244 places
First preferences per place at High Storrs School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 302 first preferences for 244 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at High Storrs School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 271 213 1.13
2016/17 240 285 223 1.19
2017/18 240 260 210 1.08
2018/19 240 281 235 1.17
2019/20 248 267 240 1.08
2020/21 239 228 216 0.95
2021/22 234 259 213 1.11
2022/23 243 267 217 1.1
2023/24 244 271 235 1.11
2024/25 243 277 230 1.14
2025/26 244 283 237 1.16
2026/27 244 302 242 1.24

Places offered

244

in 2026/27

Named first choice

302

795 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.1%

242 of 302

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 244 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 107139.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,206

100.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

480

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 High Storrs 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 High Storrs School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at High Storrs School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,577 places 1,606 on roll 2010/11 1,577 places 1,640 on roll 2011/12 1,577 places 1,619 on roll 2012/13 1,577 places 1,592 on roll 2013/14 1,577 places 1,593 on roll 2014/15 1,577 places 1,610 on roll 2015/16 1,577 places 1,546 on roll 2016/17 1,577 places 1,550 on roll 2017/18 1,577 places 1,563 on roll 2018/19 1,834 places 1,629 on roll 2020/21 1,680 places 1,689 on roll 2021/22 1,680 places 1,693 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,687 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,651 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,661 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
Sheffield

Postcode S11 7LH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145455).

Other contested secondary schools in Sheffield

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.