School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Pershore High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Pershore High School as their first choice did not get a place: 82 put it first and 74 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Worcestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

82 first preferences for 87 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Pershore High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Pershore 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 Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 90 of 458 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 Worcestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Worcestershire 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

Pershore High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 6 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Pershore High School, 2021/22 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 1.22 per place 107 first choices 88 places 2022/23 2.04 per place 182 first choices 89 places 2023/24 1.47 per place 146 first choices 99 places 2024/25 1.41 per place 127 first choices 90 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 108 first choices 89 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 82 first choices 87 places
First preferences per place at Pershore High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 82 first preferences for 87 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Pershore 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
2021/22 88 107 84 1.22
2022/23 89 182 85 2.04
2023/24 99 146 96 1.47
2024/25 90 127 82 1.41
2025/26 89 108 80 1.21
2026/27 87 82 74 0.94

Places offered

87

in 2026/27

Named first choice

82

126 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.2%

74 of 82

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 87 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

1,218

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

953

78.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

265

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Pershore 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 Pershore High School reported 265 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.2% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Pershore High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,300 places 1,233 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,170 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,153 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,109 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,084 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,081 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 1,058 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,074 on roll 2020/21 1,428 places 1,126 on roll 2021/22 1,510 places 1,194 on roll 2022/23 1,510 places 1,173 on roll 2023/24 1,468 places 1,140 on roll 2024/25 1,468 places 1,118 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
Worcestershire

Postcode WR10 2BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136925).

Other contested secondary schools in Worcestershire

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.