School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Don Valley Academy?

In 2026/27, Don Valley Academy offered 222 places and 203 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.

0.91

first choices for every place available

203 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Don Valley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Don Valley 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

Don Valley Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Don Valley 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 0.94 per place 168 first choices 178 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 126 first choices 140 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 150 first choices 162 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 148 first choices 149 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 194 first choices 221 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 209 first choices 219 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 189 first choices 211 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 206 first choices 222 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 218 first choices 222 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 233 first choices 228 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 204 first choices 212 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 203 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at Don Valley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 203 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Don Valley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 168 168 0.94
2016/17 140 126 126 0.9
2017/18 162 150 150 0.93
2018/19 149 148 148 0.99
2019/20 221 194 194 0.88
2020/21 219 209 209 0.95
2021/22 211 189 189 0.9
2022/23 222 206 206 0.93
2023/24 222 218 207 0.98
2024/25 228 233 225 1.02
2025/26 212 204 204 0.96
2026/27 222 203 203 0.91

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

203

338 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

203 of 203

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 216 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,090

80.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

260

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

149

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 Don Valley 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 Don Valley Academy reported 260 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 80.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Don Valley Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,499 places 1,230 on roll 2012/13 1,499 places 1,170 on roll 2013/14 1,545 places 1,098 on roll 2014/15 1,545 places 1,007 on roll 2015/16 1,545 places 959 on roll 2016/17 1,545 places 980 on roll 2017/18 1,328 places 976 on roll 2018/19 1,328 places 1,022 on roll 2020/21 1,499 places 1,070 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,081 on roll 2022/23 1,422 places 1,087 on roll 2023/24 1,422 places 1,087 on roll 2024/25 1,499 places 1,090 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
Doncaster

Postcode DN5 9DD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137472).

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.