School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hall Cross Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 120 families who named Hall Cross Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 301 and 407 put it first.

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

1.35

first choices for every place available

407 first preferences for 301 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hall Cross Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Hall Cross 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

Hall Cross Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Hall Cross 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 0.87 per place 241 first choices 278 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 212 first choices 227 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 252 first choices 278 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 243 first choices 276 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 292 first choices 305 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 321 first choices 310 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 338 first choices 304 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 307 first choices 311 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 362 first choices 303 places 2024/25 1.49 per place 436 first choices 293 places 2025/26 1.29 per place 383 first choices 296 places 2026/27 1.35 per place 407 first choices 301 places
First preferences per place at Hall Cross Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 407 first preferences for 301 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hall Cross Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 278 241 240 0.87
2016/17 227 212 211 0.93
2017/18 278 252 237 0.91
2018/19 276 243 226 0.88
2019/20 305 292 248 0.96
2020/21 310 321 249 1.04
2021/22 304 338 261 1.11
2022/23 311 307 248 0.99
2023/24 303 362 261 1.19
2024/25 293 436 264 1.49
2025/26 296 383 273 1.29
2026/27 301 407 287 1.35

Places offered

301

in 2026/27

Named first choice

407

848 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.5%

287 of 407

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 301 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

1,697

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,531

90.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

166

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

545

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 Hall Cross 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 Hall Cross Academy reported 166 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.2% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hall Cross Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,150 2,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 2,262 places 1,978 on roll 2012/13 2,262 places 2,016 on roll 2013/14 2,263 places 1,982 on roll 2014/15 2,263 places 1,892 on roll 2015/16 2,263 places 1,900 on roll 2016/17 2,263 places 1,889 on roll 2017/18 2,251 places 1,919 on roll 2018/19 2,263 places 1,951 on roll 2020/21 2,263 places 1,889 on roll 2021/22 2,263 places 1,877 on roll 2022/23 2,242 places 1,890 on roll 2023/24 2,242 places 1,986 on roll 2024/25 2,242 places 2,018 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 DN1 2HY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137842).

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.