School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Samuel King's School?

In 2026/27, Samuel King's School offered 24 places and 24 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.

1

first choices for every place available

24 first preferences for 24 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Samuel King's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Samuel King's 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

Samuel King's 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 Samuel King's 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 ratio not published 10 first choices 10 places 2016/17 ratio not published 10 first choices 10 places 2017/18 ratio not published 15 first choices 16 places 2018/19 ratio not published 16 first choices 16 places 2019/20 ratio not published 9 first choices 10 places 2020/21 ratio not published 11 first choices 11 places 2021/22 ratio not published 10 first choices 10 places 2022/23 ratio not published 7 first choices 7 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 28 first choices 32 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 26 first choices 27 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 24 first choices 23 places 2026/27 1 per place 24 first choices 24 places
First preferences per place at Samuel King's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 24 first preferences for 24 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Samuel King's 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 10 10 10 too small to publish
2016/17 10 10 10 too small to publish
2017/18 16 15 15 too small to publish
2018/19 16 16 16 too small to publish
2019/20 10 9 9 too small to publish
2020/21 11 11 11 too small to publish
2021/22 10 10 10 too small to publish
2022/23 7 7 7 too small to publish
2023/24 32 28 28 0.88
2024/25 27 26 26 0.96
2025/26 23 24 22 1.04
2026/27 24 24 24 1

Places offered

24

in 2026/27

Named first choice

24

27 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

24 of 24

Offers to families outside the council

33%

8 of 24 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

167

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

103

61.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

64

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 Samuel King's 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 Samuel King's School reported 64 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 61.7% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Samuel King's 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 2009/10 235 places 198 on roll 2010/11 235 places 182 on roll 2011/12 235 places 163 on roll 2012/13 235 places 157 on roll 2013/14 235 places 119 on roll 2014/15 235 places 99 on roll 2015/16 235 places 81 on roll 2016/17 235 places 77 on roll 2017/18 235 places 93 on roll 2018/19 235 places 101 on roll 2020/21 167 places 89 on roll 2021/22 167 places 88 on roll 2022/23 167 places 81 on roll 2023/24 167 places 89 on roll 2024/25 167 places 103 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode CA9 3QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112378).

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.