School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dixons McMillan Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 64 families who named Dixons McMillan Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 130 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.

1.26

first choices for every place available

164 first preferences for 130 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dixons McMillan Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Dixons McMillan 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

Dixons McMillan 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 Dixons McMillan 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 0.44 per place 49 first choices 112 places 2016/17 0.63 per place 70 first choices 111 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 129 first choices 112 places 2018/19 1.82 per place 198 first choices 109 places 2019/20 1.76 per place 194 first choices 110 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 159 first choices 131 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 153 first choices 132 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 148 first choices 133 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 169 first choices 130 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 136 first choices 128 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 149 first choices 133 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 164 first choices 130 places
First preferences per place at Dixons McMillan Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 164 first preferences for 130 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dixons McMillan Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 112 49 24 0.44
2016/17 111 70 29 0.63
2017/18 112 129 49 1.15
2018/19 109 198 60 1.82
2019/20 110 194 67 1.76
2020/21 131 159 65 1.21
2021/22 132 153 61 1.16
2022/23 133 148 64 1.11
2023/24 130 169 65 1.3
2024/25 128 136 87 1.06
2025/26 133 149 89 1.12
2026/27 130 164 100 1.26

Places offered

130

in 2026/27

Named first choice

164

957 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61%

100 of 164

Offers to families outside the council

4%

5 of 130 offers

How close you had to live

Dixons McMillan Academy filled its places in 2025, and 1,157m — 0.72 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

0.72 mi

1,157 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

670

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

670

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

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 Dixons McMillan 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 Dixons McMillan 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dixons McMillan Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 720 places 112 on roll 2015/16 720 places 224 on roll 2016/17 720 places 381 on roll 2017/18 720 places 568 on roll 2018/19 720 places 731 on roll 2020/21 670 places 605 on roll 2021/22 670 places 617 on roll 2022/23 670 places 651 on roll 2023/24 670 places 656 on roll 2024/25 670 places 670 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bradford

Postcode BD5 0JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141002).

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.