School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Outwood Academy Carlton?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Outwood Academy Carlton as their first choice did not get a place: 200 put it first and 198 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.

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

200 first preferences for 209 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Outwood Academy Carlton

There is no published appeal success rate for Outwood Academy Carlton, 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

Outwood Academy Carlton turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Outwood Academy Carlton, 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 0.88 per place 130 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 162 first choices 173 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 202 first choices 210 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 249 first choices 202 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 240 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 242 first choices 204 places 2022/23 1.3 per place 275 first choices 211 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 265 first choices 236 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 249 first choices 212 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 210 first choices 207 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 200 first choices 209 places
First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Carlton. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 200 first preferences for 209 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Outwood Academy Carlton, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 148 130 130 0.88
2017/18 173 162 162 0.94
2018/19 210 202 199 0.96
2019/20 202 249 201 1.23
2020/21 207 240 204 1.16
2021/22 204 242 204 1.19
2022/23 211 275 210 1.3
2023/24 236 265 231 1.12
2024/25 212 249 211 1.17
2025/26 207 210 203 1.01
2026/27 209 200 198 0.96

Places offered

209

in 2026/27

Named first choice

200

392 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99%

198 of 200

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 209 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

1,258

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,126

89.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

132

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 Outwood Academy Carlton 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 Outwood Academy Carlton reported 132 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.5% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Outwood Academy Carlton from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,100 places 746 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 788 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 877 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 975 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,074 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,088 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,098 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,120 on roll 2024/25 1,258 places 1,126 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 S71 3EW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139210).

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.