School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hayle Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named Hayle Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 135 and 167 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

167 first preferences for 135 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hayle Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Hayle 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 Cornwall 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 Cornwall, 40.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 105 of 258 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 Cornwall.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cornwall 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

Hayle Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Hayle 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 1 per place 98 first choices 98 places 2016/17 1 per place 81 first choices 81 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 101 first choices 103 places 2018/19 1 per place 113 first choices 113 places 2019/20 1 per place 89 first choices 89 places 2020/21 1 per place 94 first choices 94 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 99 first choices 98 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 66 first choices 80 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 105 first choices 110 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 155 first choices 131 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 136 first choices 133 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 167 first choices 135 places
First preferences per place at Hayle Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 135 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hayle 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 98 98 98 1
2016/17 81 81 81 1
2017/18 103 101 101 0.98
2018/19 113 113 113 1
2019/20 89 89 89 1
2020/21 94 94 94 1
2021/22 98 99 98 1.01
2022/23 80 66 66 0.82
2023/24 110 105 102 0.95
2024/25 131 155 131 1.18
2025/26 133 136 130 1.02
2026/27 135 167 135 1.24

Places offered

135

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

259 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.8%

135 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 135 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 112065.

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

741

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

595

80.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

146

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 Hayle 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 Hayle Academy reported 146 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 80.3% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hayle Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 769 places 722 on roll 2010/11 769 places 719 on roll 2011/12 771 places 679 on roll 2012/13 771 places 648 on roll 2013/14 771 places 607 on roll 2014/15 750 places 545 on roll 2015/16 750 places 540 on roll 2016/17 750 places 550 on roll 2017/18 750 places 546 on roll 2018/19 750 places 530 on roll 2020/21 750 places 496 on roll 2021/22 750 places 503 on roll 2022/23 750 places 513 on roll 2023/24 750 places 546 on roll 2024/25 741 places 595 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
Cornwall

Postcode TR27 4DN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145211).

Other contested secondary schools in Cornwall

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.