School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 158 and 175 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.

1.11

first choices for every place available

175 first preferences for 158 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith

There is no published appeal success rate for Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith, 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

Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith 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 Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith, 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 1.62 per place 204 first choices 126 places 2016/17 1.2 per place 153 first choices 128 places 2017/18 1.45 per place 186 first choices 128 places 2018/19 1.31 per place 195 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 194 first choices 156 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 206 first choices 159 places 2021/22 1.7 per place 271 first choices 159 places 2022/23 1.38 per place 219 first choices 159 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 185 first choices 160 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 179 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 173 first choices 153 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 175 first choices 158 places
First preferences per place at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 158 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 126 204 126 1.62
2016/17 128 153 125 1.2
2017/18 128 186 127 1.45
2018/19 149 195 148 1.31
2019/20 156 194 156 1.24
2020/21 159 206 159 1.3
2021/22 159 271 159 1.7
2022/23 159 219 159 1.38
2023/24 160 185 160 1.16
2024/25 158 179 158 1.13
2025/26 153 173 153 1.13
2026/27 158 175 158 1.11

Places offered

158

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

227 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.3%

158 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

39%

61 of 158 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

825

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

798

96.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

27

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith 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 Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith reported 27 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.7% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith 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 2010/11 813 places 832 on roll 2011/12 840 places 826 on roll 2012/13 840 places 829 on roll 2013/14 840 places 832 on roll 2014/15 840 places 839 on roll 2015/16 840 places 863 on roll 2016/17 840 places 872 on roll 2017/18 840 places 876 on roll 2018/19 840 places 878 on roll 2020/21 840 places 951 on roll 2021/22 840 places 996 on roll 2022/23 840 places 1,038 on roll 2023/24 1,065 places 1,040 on roll 2024/25 1,065 places 1,033 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode CA11 7EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136732).

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.