School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kirkbie Kendal School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Kirkbie Kendal School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 188 and 199 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.

1.06

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kirkbie Kendal School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kirkbie Kendal 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

Kirkbie Kendal School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Kirkbie Kendal 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 1.01 per place 136 first choices 135 places 2016/17 1 per place 178 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 192 first choices 191 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 240 first choices 194 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 208 first choices 168 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 192 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 188 first choices 190 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 169 first choices 165 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 175 first choices 166 places 2024/25 1 per place 189 first choices 189 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 158 first choices 161 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 199 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at Kirkbie Kendal School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kirkbie Kendal School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 135 136 135 1.01
2016/17 178 178 178 1
2017/18 191 192 191 1.01
2018/19 194 240 194 1.24
2019/20 168 208 168 1.24
2020/21 175 192 174 1.1
2021/22 190 188 188 0.99
2022/23 165 169 158 1.02
2023/24 166 175 165 1.05
2024/25 189 189 188 1
2025/26 161 158 158 0.98
2026/27 188 199 187 1.06

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

304 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94%

187 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 188 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

840

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

899

107% of capacity

Over its capacity by

59

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

220

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 Kirkbie Kendal 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 Kirkbie Kendal 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kirkbie Kendal School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,015 places 1,036 on roll 2011/12 1,028 places 990 on roll 2012/13 1,028 places 913 on roll 2013/14 1,028 places 909 on roll 2014/15 1,028 places 870 on roll 2015/16 1,028 places 841 on roll 2016/17 1,028 places 864 on roll 2017/18 1,028 places 918 on roll 2018/19 1,028 places 934 on roll 2020/21 1,060 places 1,019 on roll 2021/22 1,060 places 1,050 on roll 2022/23 1,060 places 1,078 on roll 2023/24 1,060 places 1,049 on roll 2024/25 1,060 places 1,044 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
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode LA9 7EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136671).

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.