School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Workington Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Workington Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 194 and 195 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Cumberland actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.01

first choices for every place available

195 first preferences for 194 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Workington Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Workington 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

Workington Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Workington Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.92 per place 108 first choices 117 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 143 first choices 144 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 153 first choices 167 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 187 first choices 188 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 201 first choices 203 places 2021/22 1 per place 239 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1 per place 253 first choices 253 places 2023/24 1 per place 237 first choices 237 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 250 first choices 201 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 222 first choices 202 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 195 first choices 194 places
First preferences per place at Workington Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 194 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Workington Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 117 108 108 0.92
2017/18 144 143 143 0.99
2018/19 167 153 153 0.92
2019/20 188 187 187 0.99
2020/21 203 201 201 0.99
2021/22 238 239 238 1
2022/23 253 253 253 1
2023/24 237 237 237 1
2024/25 201 250 201 1.24
2025/26 202 222 202 1.1
2026/27 194 195 192 1.01

Places offered

194

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

297 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.5%

192 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 194 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

1,006

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,118

111.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

112

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Workington 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 Workington 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Workington Academy from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,040 places 868 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 819 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 800 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 813 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,003 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,091 on roll 2022/23 1,360 places 1,177 on roll 2023/24 1,360 places 1,268 on roll 2024/25 1,256 places 1,256 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 CA14 4EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141499).

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.