School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cartmel Priory CofE School?

In 2026/27, Cartmel Priory CofE School offered 64 places and 63 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.98

first choices for every place available

63 first preferences for 64 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cartmel Priory CofE School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cartmel Priory CofE 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 Westmorland and Furness 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 Westmorland and Furness, 43% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 128 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 Westmorland and Furness.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Westmorland and Furness 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

Cartmel Priory CofE 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 Cartmel Priory CofE 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 per place 55 first choices 55 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 61 first choices 62 places 2017/18 1 per place 64 first choices 64 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 50 first choices 51 places 2019/20 1 per place 57 first choices 57 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 59 first choices 60 places 2021/22 1 per place 63 first choices 63 places 2022/23 1 per place 64 first choices 64 places 2023/24 1 per place 73 first choices 73 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 66 first choices 68 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 82 first choices 75 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 63 first choices 64 places
First preferences per place at Cartmel Priory CofE School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 63 first preferences for 64 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cartmel Priory CofE 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 55 55 55 1
2016/17 62 61 61 0.98
2017/18 64 64 64 1
2018/19 51 50 50 0.98
2019/20 57 57 57 1
2020/21 60 59 59 0.98
2021/22 63 63 63 1
2022/23 64 64 64 1
2023/24 73 73 73 1
2024/25 68 66 65 0.97
2025/26 75 82 75 1.09
2026/27 64 63 63 0.98

Places offered

64

in 2026/27

Named first choice

63

91 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

63 of 63

Offers to families outside the council

2%

1 of 64 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

438

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

355

81.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

83

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 Cartmel Priory CofE 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 Cartmel Priory CofE School reported 83 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.1% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cartmel Priory CofE School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 250 500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 380 places 324 on roll 2012/13 380 places 326 on roll 2013/14 380 places 332 on roll 2014/15 380 places 321 on roll 2015/16 380 places 329 on roll 2016/17 380 places 346 on roll 2017/18 380 places 345 on roll 2018/19 380 places 324 on roll 2020/21 380 places 317 on roll 2021/22 380 places 328 on roll 2022/23 380 places 339 on roll 2023/24 380 places 367 on roll 2024/25 438 places 355 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode LA11 7SA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137338).

Other contested secondary schools in Westmorland and Furness

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.