School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Barnsley Academy?

In 2026/27, Barnsley Academy offered 168 places and 138 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.82

first choices for every place available

138 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Barnsley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Barnsley Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Barnsley 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 Barnsley, 30.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 95 of 310 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 Barnsley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Barnsley 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

Barnsley Academy 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 Barnsley Academy, 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 0.83 per place 128 first choices 155 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 130 first choices 135 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 126 first choices 138 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 123 first choices 148 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 160 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 206 first choices 203 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 170 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 194 first choices 175 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 175 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 180 first choices 176 places 2025/26 0.86 per place 149 first choices 174 places 2026/27 0.82 per place 138 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Barnsley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 138 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Barnsley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 155 128 128 0.83
2016/17 135 130 130 0.96
2017/18 138 126 126 0.91
2018/19 148 123 123 0.83
2019/20 172 160 160 0.93
2020/21 203 206 190 1.01
2021/22 178 170 169 0.96
2022/23 175 194 173 1.11
2023/24 174 175 159 1.01
2024/25 176 180 161 1.02
2025/26 174 149 148 0.86
2026/27 168 138 138 0.82

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

138

335 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

138 of 138

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 153 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

908

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

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 Barnsley Academy 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 Barnsley Academy 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 Barnsley Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,150 places 533 on roll 2010/11 1,150 places 652 on roll 2011/12 1,150 places 742 on roll 2012/13 1,150 places 828 on roll 2013/14 1,150 places 891 on roll 2014/15 1,150 places 892 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 841 on roll 2016/17 900 places 799 on roll 2017/18 900 places 796 on roll 2018/19 900 places 800 on roll 2020/21 900 places 861 on roll 2021/22 900 places 895 on roll 2022/23 900 places 921 on roll 2023/24 900 places 922 on roll 2024/25 900 places 908 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnsley

Postcode S70 3DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 131749).

Other contested secondary schools in Barnsley

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.