School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Appleton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named Appleton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 163 and 164 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

164 first preferences for 163 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Appleton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Appleton 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 Bradford 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 Bradford, 13.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 254 of 1,912 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 Bradford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bradford 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

Appleton Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 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 Appleton 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 0.94 per place 154 first choices 163 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 140 first choices 163 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 163 first choices 177 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 156 first choices 176 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 146 first choices 158 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 138 first choices 171 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 123 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.79 per place 147 first choices 187 places 2023/24 0.71 per place 141 first choices 198 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 166 first choices 173 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 159 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 164 first choices 163 places
First preferences per place at Appleton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 164 first preferences for 163 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Appleton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 163 154 146 0.94
2016/17 163 140 122 0.86
2017/18 177 163 149 0.92
2018/19 176 156 148 0.89
2019/20 158 146 140 0.92
2020/21 171 138 137 0.81
2021/22 174 123 123 0.71
2022/23 187 147 146 0.79
2023/24 198 141 141 0.71
2024/25 173 166 159 0.96
2025/26 172 159 152 0.92
2026/27 163 164 148 1.01

Places offered

163

in 2026/27

Named first choice

164

358 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.2%

148 of 164

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 163 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 135865.

How close you had to live

Appleton Academy filled its places in 2025, and 3,866m — 2.40 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the allocations on distance criterion.

Last place offered at

2.40 mi

3,866 metres, 2025

Under criterion

allocations on distance

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Bradford Council, allocation statistics for 2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,238

93.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

82

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 Appleton 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 Appleton Academy reported 82 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Appleton Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,297 places 750 on roll 2010/11 1,497 places 791 on roll 2011/12 1,295 places 838 on roll 2012/13 1,310 places 978 on roll 2013/14 1,450 places 1,104 on roll 2014/15 1,450 places 1,193 on roll 2015/16 1,450 places 1,249 on roll 2016/17 1,450 places 1,272 on roll 2017/18 1,445 places 1,241 on roll 2018/19 1,346 places 1,235 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,232 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,235 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,232 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,250 on roll 2024/25 1,320 places 1,238 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
Bradford

Postcode BD12 8AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145173).

Other contested secondary schools in Bradford

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.