School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 84 and 89 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Barnsley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.06

first choices for every place available

89 first preferences for 84 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England 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 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

Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.66 per place 47 first choices 71 places 2020/21 0.61 per place 43 first choices 70 places 2021/22 0.69 per place 58 first choices 84 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 68 first choices 77 places 2023/24 0.66 per place 72 first choices 109 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 68 first choices 73 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 66 first choices 69 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 89 first choices 84 places
First preferences per place at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 89 first preferences for 84 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 71 47 47 0.66
2020/21 70 43 43 0.61
2021/22 84 58 58 0.69
2022/23 77 68 62 0.88
2023/24 109 72 72 0.66
2024/25 73 68 57 0.93
2025/26 69 66 62 0.96
2026/27 84 89 80 1.06

Places offered

84

in 2026/27

Named first choice

89

236 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.9%

80 of 89

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 84 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

1,120

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,124

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

4

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 Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England 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 Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,120 places 1,094 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 1,073 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,075 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,066 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,082 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,119 on roll 2024/25 1,120 places 1,124 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 S71 2LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144606).

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.