School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ulverston Victoria High School?

In 2026/27, Ulverston Victoria High School offered 160 places and 157 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

157 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ulverston Victoria High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ulverston Victoria High 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

Ulverston Victoria High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Ulverston Victoria High 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 203 first choices 204 places 2016/17 1 per place 225 first choices 224 places 2017/18 1 per place 217 first choices 217 places 2018/19 1 per place 214 first choices 213 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 198 first choices 202 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 240 first choices 216 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 202 first choices 207 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 205 first choices 207 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 179 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 173 first choices 175 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 196 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 157 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Ulverston Victoria High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 157 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ulverston Victoria High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 204 203 203 1
2016/17 224 225 222 1
2017/18 217 217 217 1
2018/19 213 214 213 1
2019/20 202 198 198 0.98
2020/21 216 240 216 1.11
2021/22 207 202 202 0.98
2022/23 207 205 204 0.99
2023/24 180 179 178 0.99
2024/25 175 173 173 0.99
2025/26 179 196 179 1.09
2026/27 160 157 157 0.98

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

157

248 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

157 of 157

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 160 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

1,027

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

987

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

270

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 Ulverston Victoria High 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 Ulverston Victoria High School reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ulverston Victoria High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,310 places 1,099 on roll 2010/11 1,269 places 1,162 on roll 2011/12 1,269 places 1,164 on roll 2012/13 1,311 places 1,185 on roll 2013/14 1,311 places 1,177 on roll 2014/15 1,432 places 1,256 on roll 2015/16 1,395 places 1,268 on roll 2016/17 1,395 places 1,335 on roll 2017/18 1,395 places 1,334 on roll 2018/19 1,395 places 1,385 on roll 2020/21 1,395 places 1,358 on roll 2021/22 1,395 places 1,322 on roll 2022/23 1,395 places 1,324 on roll 2023/24 1,395 places 1,325 on roll 2024/25 1,297 places 1,327 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 LA12 0EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112385).

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.