School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trinity Academy Halifax?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 50 families who named Trinity Academy Halifax as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 320 and 349 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

349 first preferences for 320 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trinity Academy Halifax

There is no published appeal success rate for Trinity Academy Halifax, 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

Trinity Academy Halifax 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 Trinity Academy Halifax, 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 1.42 per place 414 first choices 292 places 2016/17 1.21 per place 356 first choices 294 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 376 first choices 296 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 375 first choices 325 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 364 first choices 322 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 407 first choices 324 places 2021/22 1.26 per place 406 first choices 323 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 377 first choices 322 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 392 first choices 320 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 399 first choices 323 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 331 first choices 320 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 349 first choices 320 places
First preferences per place at Trinity Academy Halifax. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 349 first preferences for 320 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trinity Academy Halifax, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 292 414 271 1.42
2016/17 294 356 275 1.21
2017/18 296 376 277 1.27
2018/19 325 375 305 1.15
2019/20 322 364 304 1.13
2020/21 324 407 304 1.26
2021/22 323 406 295 1.26
2022/23 322 377 290 1.17
2023/24 320 392 300 1.23
2024/25 323 399 303 1.24
2025/26 320 331 293 1.03
2026/27 320 349 299 1.09

Places offered

320

in 2026/27

Named first choice

349

711 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.7%

299 of 349

Offers to families outside the council

13%

41 of 320 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

1,966

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,608

81.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

358

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 Trinity Academy Halifax 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 Trinity Academy Halifax reported 358 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Trinity Academy Halifax from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,075 places 1,061 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,074 on roll 2012/13 1,500 places 1,210 on roll 2013/14 1,900 places 1,635 on roll 2014/15 1,900 places 1,652 on roll 2015/16 1,900 places 1,670 on roll 2016/17 1,900 places 1,730 on roll 2017/18 1,900 places 1,729 on roll 2018/19 1,900 places 1,753 on roll 2020/21 1,650 places 1,555 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,573 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,599 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,608 on roll 2024/25 1,966 places 1,608 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Trinity Academy Halifax has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Trinity Academy Halifax. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 September 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2695, ADA2970 and ADA3036

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Calderdale

Postcode HX2 9TZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136094).

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.