School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kirk Balk Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Kirk Balk Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 237 put it first and 233 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Barnsley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

237 first preferences for 254 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kirk Balk Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Kirk Balk 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

Kirk Balk Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Kirk Balk Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.92 per place 219 first choices 238 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 233 first choices 245 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 281 first choices 268 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 256 first choices 260 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 266 first choices 264 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 257 first choices 262 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 276 first choices 262 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 293 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 268 first choices 257 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 257 first choices 264 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 237 first choices 254 places
First preferences per place at Kirk Balk Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 237 first preferences for 254 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kirk Balk Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 238 219 219 0.92
2017/18 245 233 233 0.95
2018/19 268 281 267 1.05
2019/20 260 256 255 0.98
2020/21 264 266 260 1.01
2021/22 262 257 256 0.98
2022/23 262 276 258 1.05
2023/24 268 293 255 1.09
2024/25 257 268 247 1.04
2025/26 264 257 246 0.97
2026/27 254 237 233 0.93

Places offered

254

in 2026/27

Named first choice

237

405 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.3%

233 of 237

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 254 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,317

97.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

33

across Years 7 to 11

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 Kirk Balk 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 Kirk Balk Academy reported 33 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.6% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kirk Balk Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,200 places 1,071 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,066 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,110 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,127 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,186 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,276 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,307 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,334 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,320 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,317 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnsley

Postcode S74 9HX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140979).

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.