School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Sir Thomas Wharton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 246 put it first and 236 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Doncaster actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

246 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Thomas Wharton 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

Sir Thomas Wharton Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.92 per place 160 first choices 174 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 145 first choices 166 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 160 first choices 197 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 160 first choices 204 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 158 first choices 200 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 179 first choices 207 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 202 first choices 229 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 232 first choices 230 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 217 first choices 254 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 246 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 246 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 174 160 160 0.92
2018/19 166 145 145 0.87
2019/20 197 160 160 0.81
2020/21 204 160 160 0.78
2021/22 200 158 158 0.79
2022/23 207 179 175 0.86
2023/24 229 202 198 0.88
2024/25 230 232 204 1.01
2025/26 254 217 217 0.85
2026/27 257 246 236 0.96

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

246

350 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.9%

236 of 246

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 257 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

1,051

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,007

95.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

44

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

127

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 Sir Thomas Wharton 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 Sir Thomas Wharton Academy reported 44 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.8% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sir Thomas Wharton Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,266 places 894 on roll 2017/18 1,172 places 867 on roll 2018/19 1,166 places 920 on roll 2020/21 1,178 places 1,020 on roll 2021/22 1,178 places 1,041 on roll 2022/23 1,051 places 1,043 on roll 2023/24 1,051 places 1,098 on roll 2024/25 1,178 places 1,155 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 DN12 1HH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144364).

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.