School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Unsworth Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Unsworth Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 191 put it first and 189 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Bury actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

191 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Unsworth Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Unsworth 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 Bury 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 Bury, 27.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 118 of 427 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 Bury.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bury 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

Unsworth Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Unsworth Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.41 per place 78 first choices 188 places 2018/19 0.45 per place 89 first choices 196 places 2019/20 0.64 per place 133 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 174 first choices 198 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 175 first choices 199 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 201 first choices 198 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 222 first choices 200 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 266 first choices 194 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 189 first choices 199 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 191 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Unsworth Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Unsworth Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 188 78 78 0.41
2018/19 196 89 89 0.45
2019/20 207 133 133 0.64
2020/21 198 174 174 0.88
2021/22 199 175 174 0.88
2022/23 198 201 187 1.02
2023/24 200 222 191 1.11
2024/25 194 266 193 1.37
2025/26 199 189 186 0.95
2026/27 199 191 189 0.96

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99%

189 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 199 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

935

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

962

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

27

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 Unsworth 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 Unsworth 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Unsworth Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,034 places 763 on roll 2017/18 1,034 places 744 on roll 2018/19 1,034 places 758 on roll 2020/21 1,034 places 876 on roll 2021/22 1,034 places 906 on roll 2022/23 935 places 942 on roll 2023/24 935 places 948 on roll 2024/25 935 places 962 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
Bury

Postcode BL9 8LP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143848).

Other contested secondary schools in Bury

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.