School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 252 and 293 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

293 first preferences for 252 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Wilfrid's Church of England 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 Blackburn with Darwen 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 Blackburn with Darwen, 9.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 58 of 594 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 Blackburn with Darwen.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Blackburn with Darwen 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

St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 2 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 St Wilfrid's Church of England 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 0.92 per place 222 first choices 241 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 278 first choices 245 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 309 first choices 244 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 255 first choices 245 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 260 first choices 244 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 302 first choices 252 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 220 first choices 243 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 294 first choices 248 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 282 first choices 242 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 291 first choices 257 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 279 first choices 257 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 293 first choices 252 places
First preferences per place at St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 293 first preferences for 252 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 241 222 186 0.92
2016/17 245 278 193 1.13
2017/18 244 309 221 1.27
2018/19 245 255 203 1.04
2019/20 244 260 199 1.07
2020/21 252 302 221 1.2
2021/22 243 220 187 0.91
2022/23 248 294 221 1.19
2023/24 242 282 203 1.17
2024/25 257 291 218 1.13
2025/26 257 279 229 1.09
2026/27 252 293 216 1.16

Places offered

252

in 2026/27

Named first choice

293

884 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.7%

216 of 293

Offers to families outside the council

4%

9 of 252 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

1,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,265

102.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 St Wilfrid's Church of England 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 St Wilfrid's Church of England 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,557 places 1,563 on roll 2012/13 1,630 places 1,538 on roll 2013/14 1,630 places 1,506 on roll 2014/15 1,630 places 1,461 on roll 2015/16 1,630 places 1,430 on roll 2016/17 1,630 places 1,422 on roll 2017/18 1,630 places 1,418 on roll 2018/19 1,630 places 1,439 on roll 2020/21 1,630 places 1,506 on roll 2021/22 1,630 places 1,504 on roll 2022/23 1,630 places 1,501 on roll 2023/24 1,630 places 1,486 on roll 2024/25 1,630 places 1,481 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. St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2799

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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Blackburn with Darwen

Postcode BB2 2JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136900).

Other contested secondary schools in Blackburn with Darwen

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.