School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Halifax Academy?

In 2026/27, The Halifax Academy offered 185 places and 157 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.85

first choices for every place available

157 first preferences for 185 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Halifax Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Halifax 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 Calderdale 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 Calderdale, 14.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 46 of 319 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 Calderdale.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Calderdale 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

The Halifax Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 4 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 The Halifax 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 0.99 per place 179 first choices 180 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 157 first choices 177 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 195 first choices 198 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 179 first choices 193 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 204 first choices 206 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 198 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 199 first choices 206 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 199 first choices 202 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 208 first choices 203 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 191 first choices 210 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 223 first choices 195 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 157 first choices 185 places
First preferences per place at The Halifax Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 157 first preferences for 185 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Halifax Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 179 154 0.99
2016/17 177 157 146 0.89
2017/18 198 195 170 0.98
2018/19 193 179 174 0.93
2019/20 206 204 177 0.99
2020/21 207 198 178 0.96
2021/22 206 199 181 0.97
2022/23 202 199 185 0.99
2023/24 203 208 183 1.02
2024/25 210 191 191 0.91
2025/26 195 223 185 1.14
2026/27 185 157 157 0.85

Places offered

185

in 2026/27

Named first choice

157

246 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

157 of 157

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 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

1,607

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,443

89.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

164

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 The Halifax 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 The Halifax Academy reported 164 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.8% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Halifax Academy 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 2013/14 900 places 842 on roll 2014/15 960 places 885 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 963 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 1,056 on roll 2017/18 1,420 places 1,143 on roll 2018/19 1,420 places 1,244 on roll 2020/21 1,420 places 1,385 on roll 2021/22 1,420 places 1,420 on roll 2022/23 1,470 places 1,434 on roll 2023/24 1,470 places 1,450 on roll 2024/25 1,607 places 1,443 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
Calderdale

Postcode HX2 0BA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140326).

Other contested secondary schools in Calderdale

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.