School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at John Ruskin School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named John Ruskin School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 46 and 52 put it first.

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

1.13

first choices for every place available

52 first preferences for 46 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at John Ruskin School

There is no published appeal success rate for John Ruskin 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

John Ruskin School turned first-choice families away in 6 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 John Ruskin 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 20 first choices 20 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 26 first choices 28 places 2017/18 1 per place 28 first choices 28 places 2018/19 1 per place 35 first choices 35 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 50 first choices 51 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 55 first choices 50 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 47 first choices 46 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 37 first choices 38 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 48 first choices 45 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 61 first choices 46 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 50 first choices 46 places 2026/27 1.13 per place 52 first choices 46 places
First preferences per place at John Ruskin School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 52 first preferences for 46 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at John Ruskin 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 20 20 20 1
2016/17 28 26 26 0.93
2017/18 28 28 28 1
2018/19 35 35 35 1
2019/20 51 50 50 0.98
2020/21 50 55 49 1.1
2021/22 46 47 46 1.02
2022/23 38 37 37 0.97
2023/24 45 48 45 1.07
2024/25 46 61 46 1.33
2025/26 46 50 42 1.09
2026/27 46 52 46 1.13

Places offered

46

in 2026/27

Named first choice

52

87 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.5%

46 of 52

Offers to families outside the council

22%

10 of 46 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

268

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

244

91% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

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 John Ruskin 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 John Ruskin School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91% 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 John Ruskin School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 150 300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 230 places 197 on roll 2010/11 240 places 196 on roll 2011/12 240 places 196 on roll 2012/13 240 places 183 on roll 2013/14 240 places 155 on roll 2014/15 240 places 154 on roll 2015/16 268 places 145 on roll 2016/17 268 places 145 on roll 2017/18 268 places 145 on roll 2018/19 268 places 180 on roll 2020/21 268 places 226 on roll 2021/22 268 places 230 on roll 2022/23 268 places 240 on roll 2023/24 268 places 243 on roll 2024/25 268 places 244 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode LA21 8EW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112384).

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.