School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Beckfoot School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 149 families who named Beckfoot School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 271 and 403 put it first.

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

1.49

first choices for every place available

403 first preferences for 271 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Beckfoot School

There is no published appeal success rate for Beckfoot School, 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

Beckfoot School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Beckfoot School, 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 1.73 per place 466 first choices 270 places 2016/17 1.8 per place 482 first choices 268 places 2017/18 1.64 per place 443 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.72 per place 450 first choices 262 places 2019/20 1.77 per place 468 first choices 264 places 2020/21 1.57 per place 412 first choices 263 places 2021/22 1.53 per place 397 first choices 259 places 2022/23 1.58 per place 404 first choices 256 places 2023/24 1.52 per place 392 first choices 258 places 2024/25 1.66 per place 416 first choices 251 places 2025/26 1.49 per place 387 first choices 259 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 403 first choices 271 places
First preferences per place at Beckfoot School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 403 first preferences for 271 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Beckfoot School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 270 466 266 1.73
2016/17 268 482 264 1.8
2017/18 270 443 263 1.64
2018/19 262 450 253 1.72
2019/20 264 468 253 1.77
2020/21 263 412 253 1.57
2021/22 259 397 255 1.53
2022/23 256 404 247 1.58
2023/24 258 392 255 1.52
2024/25 251 416 250 1.66
2025/26 259 387 251 1.49
2026/27 271 403 254 1.49

Places offered

271

in 2026/27

Named first choice

403

1,206 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63%

254 of 403

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 271 offers

How close you had to live

Beckfoot School filled its places in 2025, and 2,388m — 1.48 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the non-sibling allocations in priority area criterion.

Last place offered at

1.48 mi

2,388 metres, 2025

Under criterion

non-sibling allocations in priority area

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

1,335

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,342

100.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

7

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

275

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 Beckfoot School 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 Beckfoot School 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Beckfoot School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,656 places 1,634 on roll 2014/15 1,610 places 1,620 on roll 2015/16 1,610 places 1,624 on roll 2016/17 1,610 places 1,626 on roll 2017/18 1,610 places 1,641 on roll 2018/19 1,610 places 1,665 on roll 2020/21 1,610 places 1,680 on roll 2021/22 1,610 places 1,657 on roll 2022/23 1,610 places 1,633 on roll 2023/24 1,610 places 1,628 on roll 2024/25 1,610 places 1,601 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bradford

Postcode BD16 1EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139975).

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.