School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Ecgbert School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named King Ecgbert School as their first choice did not get a place: 253 put it first and 221 of them were offered one.

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

32

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

253 first preferences for 258 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Ecgbert School

There is no published appeal success rate for King Ecgbert 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

King Ecgbert School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at King Ecgbert 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 1.38 per place 267 first choices 193 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 248 first choices 198 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 214 first choices 197 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 221 first choices 196 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 234 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 199 first choices 210 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 211 first choices 200 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 181 first choices 200 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 251 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 209 first choices 246 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 240 first choices 247 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 253 first choices 258 places
First preferences per place at King Ecgbert School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 253 first preferences for 258 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Ecgbert School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 193 267 185 1.38
2016/17 198 248 191 1.25
2017/18 197 214 176 1.09
2018/19 196 221 190 1.13
2019/20 210 234 202 1.11
2020/21 210 199 186 0.95
2021/22 200 211 179 1.05
2022/23 200 181 164 0.91
2023/24 236 251 216 1.06
2024/25 246 209 204 0.85
2025/26 247 240 207 0.97
2026/27 258 253 221 0.98

Places offered

258

in 2026/27

Named first choice

253

625 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.4%

221 of 253

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 258 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

1,240

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,115

89.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

125

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

360

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 King Ecgbert 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 King Ecgbert School reported 125 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.9% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King Ecgbert School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,197 places 1,249 on roll 2013/14 1,197 places 1,284 on roll 2014/15 1,197 places 1,314 on roll 2015/16 1,197 places 1,307 on roll 2016/17 1,197 places 1,255 on roll 2017/18 1,197 places 1,283 on roll 2018/19 1,197 places 1,324 on roll 2020/21 1,197 places 1,404 on roll 2021/22 1,197 places 1,392 on roll 2022/23 1,197 places 1,385 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,448 on roll 2024/25 1,600 places 1,504 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. King Ecgbert School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming King Ecgbert School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 April 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2837

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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sheffield

Postcode S17 3QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138841).

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.