School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Huntington School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Huntington School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 227 and 266 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in York actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.17

first choices for every place available

266 first preferences for 227 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Huntington School

There is no published appeal success rate for Huntington 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 York 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 York, 43.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 36 of 83 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 York.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not York 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

Huntington School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Huntington 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 1.25 per place 303 first choices 243 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 263 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 256 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 266 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 255 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 268 first choices 236 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 259 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 259 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 228 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 239 first choices 229 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 264 first choices 230 places 2026/27 1.17 per place 266 first choices 227 places
First preferences per place at Huntington School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 266 first preferences for 227 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Huntington School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 243 303 241 1.25
2016/17 238 263 234 1.11
2017/18 239 256 234 1.07
2018/19 239 266 238 1.11
2019/20 236 255 233 1.08
2020/21 236 268 228 1.14
2021/22 237 259 235 1.09
2022/23 234 259 233 1.11
2023/24 234 228 228 0.97
2024/25 229 239 226 1.04
2025/26 230 264 227 1.15
2026/27 227 266 226 1.17

Places offered

227

in 2026/27

Named first choice

266

532 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85%

226 of 266

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 227 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

1,195

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,205

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

362

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 Huntington 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 Huntington 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Huntington School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,487 places 1,503 on roll 2010/11 1,487 places 1,476 on roll 2011/12 1,487 places 1,434 on roll 2012/13 1,487 places 1,421 on roll 2013/14 1,487 places 1,451 on roll 2014/15 1,549 places 1,464 on roll 2015/16 1,549 places 1,467 on roll 2016/17 1,549 places 1,473 on roll 2017/18 1,544 places 1,455 on roll 2018/19 1,551 places 1,526 on roll 2020/21 1,551 places 1,508 on roll 2021/22 1,515 places 1,507 on roll 2022/23 1,515 places 1,505 on roll 2023/24 1,515 places 1,476 on roll 2024/25 1,557 places 1,469 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
York

Postcode YO32 9WT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121673).

Other contested secondary schools in York

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.