School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at De Warenne Academy?

In 2026/27, De Warenne Academy offered 148 places and 146 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

146 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at De Warenne Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for De Warenne 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 Doncaster 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 Doncaster, 24.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 137 of 553 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 Doncaster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Doncaster 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

De Warenne 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 De Warenne 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 1.01 per place 147 first choices 145 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 148 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 128 first choices 135 places 2018/19 1 per place 121 first choices 121 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 156 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 132 first choices 140 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 135 first choices 143 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 161 first choices 164 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 135 first choices 143 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 158 first choices 145 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 139 first choices 146 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 146 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at De Warenne Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 146 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at De Warenne Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 147 143 1.01
2016/17 147 148 147 1.01
2017/18 135 128 128 0.95
2018/19 121 121 121 1
2019/20 150 156 148 1.04
2020/21 140 132 132 0.94
2021/22 143 135 135 0.94
2022/23 164 161 161 0.98
2023/24 143 135 135 0.94
2024/25 145 158 141 1.09
2025/26 146 139 139 0.95
2026/27 148 146 146 0.99

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

146

190 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

146 of 146

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 148 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

755

83.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

145

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 De Warenne 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 De Warenne Academy reported 145 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.9% 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 De Warenne Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 623 on roll 2010/11 900 places 646 on roll 2011/12 900 places 682 on roll 2012/13 900 places 683 on roll 2013/14 900 places 689 on roll 2014/15 900 places 705 on roll 2015/16 900 places 711 on roll 2016/17 900 places 720 on roll 2017/18 737 places 718 on roll 2018/19 737 places 719 on roll 2020/21 750 places 724 on roll 2021/22 750 places 719 on roll 2022/23 900 places 749 on roll 2023/24 900 places 747 on roll 2024/25 900 places 755 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
Doncaster

Postcode DN12 3JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135942).

Other contested secondary schools in Doncaster

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.