School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Whitehaven Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named The Whitehaven Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 180 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

180 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Whitehaven Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Whitehaven 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 Cumberland 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 Cumberland, 52.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 76 of 145 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 Cumberland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cumberland 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 Whitehaven Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 The Whitehaven 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 0.6 per place 80 first choices 134 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 116 first choices 128 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 87 first choices 98 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 122 first choices 169 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 169 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 206 first choices 174 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 166 first choices 169 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 180 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at The Whitehaven Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Whitehaven Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 134 80 80 0.6
2020/21 128 116 116 0.91
2021/22 98 87 87 0.89
2022/23 169 122 122 0.72
2023/24 173 169 167 0.98
2024/25 174 206 174 1.18
2025/26 169 166 166 0.98
2026/27 170 180 169 1.06

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

356 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.9%

169 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 170 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

655

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

769

117.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

114

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

245

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 Whitehaven 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 Whitehaven Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Whitehaven 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 1,465 places 496 on roll 2020/21 1,465 places 545 on roll 2021/22 1,465 places 591 on roll 2022/23 900 places 665 on roll 2023/24 900 places 749 on roll 2024/25 900 places 810 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
Cumberland

Postcode CA28 8TY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146634).

Other contested secondary schools in Cumberland

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.