School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Whitworth Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Whitworth Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 218 and 219 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in County Durham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1

first choices for every place available

219 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Whitworth Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Whitworth Park 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 County Durham 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 County Durham, 35.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 426 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 County Durham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not County Durham 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

Whitworth Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Whitworth Park Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.88 per place 119 first choices 136 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 144 first choices 153 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 180 first choices 220 places 2022/23 0.74 per place 140 first choices 188 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 168 first choices 201 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 172 first choices 188 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 182 first choices 195 places 2026/27 1 per place 219 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at Whitworth Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Whitworth Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 136 119 119 0.88
2020/21 153 144 144 0.94
2021/22 220 180 180 0.82
2022/23 188 140 140 0.74
2023/24 201 168 168 0.84
2024/25 188 172 171 0.91
2025/26 195 182 182 0.93
2026/27 218 219 212 1

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

334 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.8%

212 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 218 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

1,370

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

970

70.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

400

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 Whitworth Park 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 Whitworth Park Academy reported 400 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 70.8% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Whitworth Park Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,488 places 782 on roll 2020/21 1,488 places 732 on roll 2021/22 1,370 places 789 on roll 2022/23 1,370 places 852 on roll 2023/24 1,370 places 936 on roll 2024/25 1,370 places 970 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
County Durham

Postcode DL16 7LN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145564).

Other contested secondary schools in County Durham

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.