School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Goldington Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 90 families who named Goldington Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 182 and 272 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Bedford actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

1.49

first choices for every place available

272 first preferences for 182 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Goldington Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Goldington 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 Bedford 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 Bedford, 29.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 91 of 305 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 Bedford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bedford 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

Goldington Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 9 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Goldington Academy, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 ratio not published 15 first choices 18 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 71 first choices 78 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 163 first choices 172 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 199 first choices 184 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 223 first choices 186 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 238 first choices 186 places 2024/25 1.71 per place 318 first choices 186 places 2025/26 1.68 per place 303 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 272 first choices 182 places
First preferences per place at Goldington Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 272 first preferences for 182 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Goldington Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 18 15 14 too small to publish
2019/20 78 71 71 0.91
2020/21 172 163 161 0.95
2021/22 184 199 176 1.08
2022/23 186 223 185 1.2
2023/24 186 238 183 1.28
2024/25 186 318 184 1.71
2025/26 180 303 179 1.68
2026/27 182 272 182 1.49

Places offered

182

in 2026/27

Named first choice

272

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.9%

182 of 272

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 182 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

817

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

943

115.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

126

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 Goldington 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 Goldington 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Goldington Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 676 places 674 on roll 2011/12 676 places 674 on roll 2012/13 676 places 661 on roll 2013/14 676 places 653 on roll 2014/15 676 places 657 on roll 2015/16 676 places 675 on roll 2016/17 676 places 689 on roll 2017/18 964 places 731 on roll 2018/19 960 places 722 on roll 2020/21 750 places 803 on roll 2021/22 750 places 834 on roll 2022/23 750 places 886 on roll 2023/24 750 places 929 on roll 2024/25 817 places 943 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Goldington Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Goldington Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 October 2022 No fault found ADA3970

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bedford

Postcode MK41 9BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136552).

Other contested secondary schools in Bedford

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.