Applications for September 2027 opened on 7 September and close at midnight on 31 October. Five county schools took more first choices than they had places.

Herefordshire’s secondary school applications opened on Monday 7 September. They close at midnight on 31 October 2026, and the council has already said in writing that late applications “could result in not being offered a place in a preferred school”.

It applies to children born between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2016, who start Year 7 in September 2027. Offers land on the national offer day of 1 March 2027.

Parents and carers of Year 6 pupils living in Herefordshire will get a letter from the Pupil Admissions Officer, either through their child’s current primary school or, if the child attends a school in another authority, to the home address. Applications are made online. Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan go through a separate route and should not use the form.

You express three preferences. That number matters more than most parents realise, and the council’s own figures show why.

Which Herefordshire schools were over their limit last time

Herefordshire Council publishes the previous round’s numbers in Appendix 3 of its Secondary school transfer guide 2027 (PDF). Almost nobody reads it. It is the single most useful thing on the council’s website for anyone filling the form in this month.

For every school it gives the Published Admission Number, how many families put it first, second and third, how many offers were made, and how many appeals were heard and upheld. The guide heads the preference column “No. of preference requests for transfer 2025” and the offer column “Offers made as at 23/07/2026”, so these are the figures for the round that has just finished, not a forecast for this one.

Five schools received more first preferences than they had places.

School Places First preferences First choices per 100 places Offers made Appeals heard Upheld
Fairfield School, Peterchurch 120 185 154 131 8 0
St Mary’s RC High School, Lugwardine 150 203 135 150 8 0
Weobley High School 100 133 133 111 4 0
Wigmore School 90 104 116 96 0 0
Whitecross School, Hereford 189 202 107 190 0 0
Queen Elizabeth, Bromyard 80 80 100 78 0 0
John Masefield High School, Ledbury 150 150 100 151 0 0
Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School 220 198 90 223 7 0
Lady Hawkins School, Kington 80 69 86 69 0 0
Aylestone School, Hereford 90 72 80 74 0 0
The Hereford Academy 150 120 80 112 0 0
John Kyrle High School, Ross-on-Wye 240 181 75 186 0 0
Kingstone Academy 90 67 74 90 0 0
Earl Mortimer College, Leominster 140 73 52 83 0 0

The guide lists Queen Elizabeth as Queen Elizabeth Humanities College and Aylestone as Aylestone High; the council’s open days page uses the shorter names above. The Steiner Academy is a through school with 28 places, and applications for it go direct to the school as well as on the council form.

Two things stand out.

Offers can exceed the admission number. Five schools took more pupils than their PAN last time: Bluecoat at 223 against 220, Whitecross 190 against 189, John Masefield 151 against 150, Fairfield 131 against 120 and Weobley 111 against 100. The guide marks each one “Exceeded PAN”. A school being oversubscribed on first preferences does not automatically mean it turned people away.

Twenty seven appeals were heard across the county. None succeeded. Fairfield and St Mary’s heard eight each, Bluecoat seven and Weobley four. The upheld column reads zero for every school in the county. Appeals are heard by an independent panel, mostly in May and June, and must be lodged within 20 school days of the refusal.

First preferences per 100 places at Herefordshire secondary schools Horizontal bar chart of first preferences received per 100 places at each Herefordshire secondary school in the last admissions round. Fairfield 154, St Mary's 135, Weobley 133, Wigmore 116, Whitecross 107, Queen Elizabeth Bromyard 100, John Masefield 100, Bluecoat 90, Lady Hawkins 86, Aylestone 80, The Hereford Academy 80, John Kyrle 75, Kingstone 74, Earl Mortimer 52. Five Herefordshire schools took more first choices than they had places First preferences received per 100 places, last completed round. Anything above 100 means more families put the school first than it could admit. 100 = full Fairfield, Peterchurch154 St Mary's, Lugwardine135 Weobley High133 Wigmore116 Whitecross, Hereford107 Queen Elizabeth, Bromyard100 John Masefield, Ledbury100 Bluecoat, Hereford90 Lady Hawkins, Kington86 Aylestone, Hereford80 The Hereford Academy80 John Kyrle, Ross-on-Wye75 Kingstone74 Earl Mortimer, Leominster52 Source: Herefordshire Council, Secondary school transfer guide 2027, Appendix 3. Preferences from the last round, offers as at 23 July 2026. First preferences include applicants living outside Herefordshire. The Steiner Academy is excluded: it is a through school and takes applications direct. Graphic by Hereford Today
First preferences per 100 places at each Herefordshire secondary school in the last completed round. Every figure is in the table above.

Open evenings: the first is on 17 September

The council lists the open events schools have told it about. Several are within the next fortnight, and the list is incomplete because schools supply their dates as they set them.

School Open events
The Hereford Academy Thursday 17 September, 6pm to 8pm
Earl Mortimer College, Leominster Wednesday 23 September, 5.30pm
Lady Hawkins School, Kington Thursday 24 September, 6pm to 8pm
Queen Elizabeth, Bromyard Tuesday 29 September, 5.30pm to 8pm
Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School Evening Wednesday 30 September, 5pm to 8pm; mornings Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October, 9am
St Mary’s RC High School, Lugwardine Evening Thursday 1 October, 4.30pm to 8pm; mornings 5, 6 and 7 October, 9.15am, by appointment
Weobley High School Thursday 1 October, from 6pm
Whitecross School, Hereford Monday 12 to Thursday 15 October, 9am to 12pm daily; also Thursday 15 October, 6.30pm to 9pm
Aylestone School, Hereford Evening Wednesday 14 October, 5pm to 7pm, head’s address at 5pm or 6.30pm; tours 19 to 23 October, 9am and 1.45pm
Wigmore School Thursday 15 October, morning 9.50am to 12 noon by appointment, evening 6pm to 8.30pm

No dates had been published for Fairfield, John Kyrle, John Masefield, Kingstone or the Steiner Academy when we checked on 8 September. Check the school’s own site, or the council’s page, rather than assuming there is no event.

How the offers are actually decided

Three points in the guide are worth knowing before you rank your three schools.

  • At the first stage, your order does not count. All three of your preferences are treated as a first preference while each school ranks the children who applied to it. Only after that is each family offered the highest of its three preferences that is still available.
  • If none of your three can be offered, you are given the nearest school with room. The guide calls this being “system allocated”. It happened to at least one child at six of the county’s schools last time.
  • Most Herefordshire children are not in a contested catchment. In the last round, catchment was the single largest route in at ten of the county’s schools, and at The Hereford Academy it accounted for 106 of the 112 offers made.

Late applications have two tiers. Anything received between 1 November 2026 and 13 January 2027 is treated as late and processed after 1 March 2027, unless there is evidence of a genuine reason. Anything after 13 January 2027 goes into the second allocation stage.

For comparison: England as a whole

The Department for Education’s national statistics for entry in September 2026 put the secondary first preference rate at 83.6 per cent across England, up from 83.5 per cent the year before, with 96.4 per cent of applicants offered one of their ranked preferences. Secondary applications fell 1.3 per cent on 2025, and the number of places fell 0.2 per cent. Those are England-wide figures; the council does not publish a Herefordshire first preference rate in the guide.

What it means for you

  • The deadline is midnight on Saturday 31 October 2026. The council’s page gives no later date and no extension.
  • Use all three preferences, and include your catchment school. The guide says plainly that if you submit three preferences by the deadline and include your catchment school, an offer of one of them is “highly likely”. Leaving it off is how families end up system allocated to a school they did not choose.
  • Read the individual school’s admission policy if it sets its own. Bluecoat, St Mary’s, John Masefield, The Hereford Academy and Whitecross rank applicants on their own published criteria, not the council’s five priorities. Supporting evidence usually goes to the school, not the council.
  • Do not count on an appeal. Twenty seven were heard in the county last round and none was upheld.
  • If you cannot apply online, the admissions officer for secondary transfers is Dawn Skyrme on 01432 260925, or schooladmissions@herefordshire.gov.uk. The team is at Plough Lane Offices, Hereford HR4 0LE.

Our guides to bin collection days, parking in Hereford and council tax bands cover the rest of the practical local information.

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