School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Tapton School & Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 91 families who named Tapton School & Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 267 and 337 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

337 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Tapton School & Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Tapton School & Sixth Form, 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

Tapton School & Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Tapton School & Sixth Form, 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 1.12 per place 287 first choices 256 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 339 first choices 256 places 2017/18 1.42 per place 376 first choices 265 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 328 first choices 264 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 366 first choices 288 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 342 first choices 274 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 366 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 333 first choices 270 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 309 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 314 first choices 266 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 287 first choices 266 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 337 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at Tapton School & Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 337 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Tapton School & Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 256 287 245 1.12
2016/17 256 339 252 1.32
2017/18 265 376 259 1.42
2018/19 264 328 256 1.24
2019/20 288 366 282 1.27
2020/21 274 342 264 1.25
2021/22 249 366 241 1.47
2022/23 270 333 259 1.23
2023/24 268 309 254 1.15
2024/25 266 314 250 1.18
2025/26 266 287 256 1.08
2026/27 267 337 246 1.26

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

337

832 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73%

246 of 337

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 267 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

1,280

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,326

103.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

493

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 Tapton School & Sixth Form 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 Tapton School & Sixth Form 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Tapton School & Sixth Form from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,571 places 1,651 on roll 2012/13 1,571 places 1,641 on roll 2013/14 1,571 places 1,599 on roll 2014/15 1,568 places 1,619 on roll 2015/16 1,773 places 1,649 on roll 2016/17 1,773 places 1,680 on roll 2017/18 1,773 places 1,660 on roll 2018/19 1,773 places 1,670 on roll 2020/21 1,773 places 1,856 on roll 2021/22 1,773 places 1,812 on roll 2022/23 1,773 places 1,812 on roll 2023/24 1,773 places 1,822 on roll 2024/25 1,773 places 1,757 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 S10 5RG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138069).

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.