School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodham Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Woodham Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 240 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

240 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodham Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodham 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

Woodham 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 Woodham 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 0.98 per place 148 first choices 151 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 167 first choices 170 places 2017/18 1 per place 120 first choices 120 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 119 first choices 124 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 193 first choices 197 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 200 first choices 209 places 2021/22 1 per place 249 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 260 first choices 216 places 2023/24 1 per place 217 first choices 217 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 217 first choices 215 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 226 first choices 213 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 240 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Woodham Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 240 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodham Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 151 148 148 0.98
2016/17 170 167 167 0.98
2017/18 120 120 120 1
2018/19 124 119 119 0.96
2019/20 197 193 193 0.98
2020/21 209 200 200 0.96
2021/22 249 249 239 1
2022/23 216 260 211 1.2
2023/24 217 217 212 1
2024/25 215 217 213 1.01
2025/26 213 226 213 1.06
2026/27 225 240 225 1.07

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

240

347 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.8%

225 of 240

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 225 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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,027

82.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

223

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 Woodham 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 Woodham Academy reported 223 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.2% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Woodham Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,312 places 759 on roll 2013/14 1,223 places 753 on roll 2014/15 1,223 places 744 on roll 2015/16 1,223 places 735 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 739 on roll 2017/18 1,223 places 708 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 736 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 924 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 976 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,005 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,031 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,027 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
County Durham

Postcode DL5 4AX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138717).

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.