School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Batley Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Batley Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: 133 put it first and 112 of them were offered one.

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

21

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

133 first preferences for 137 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Batley Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Batley Grammar School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Kirklees 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 Kirklees, 39.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 345 of 880 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 Kirklees.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kirklees 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

Batley Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 Batley Grammar School, 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 1.91 per place 176 first choices 92 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 192 first choices 138 places 2017/18 1.06 per place 147 first choices 139 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 164 first choices 151 places 2019/20 1.33 per place 210 first choices 158 places 2020/21 1.51 per place 235 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 170 first choices 136 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 160 first choices 139 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 146 first choices 129 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 157 first choices 131 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 112 first choices 133 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 133 first choices 137 places
First preferences per place at Batley Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 133 first preferences for 137 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Batley Grammar School, 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 92 176 82 1.91
2016/17 138 192 120 1.39
2017/18 139 147 110 1.06
2018/19 151 164 122 1.09
2019/20 158 210 135 1.33
2020/21 156 235 130 1.51
2021/22 136 170 111 1.25
2022/23 139 160 115 1.15
2023/24 129 146 108 1.13
2024/25 131 157 108 1.2
2025/26 133 112 99 0.84
2026/27 137 133 112 0.97

Places offered

137

in 2026/27

Named first choice

133

481 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.2%

112 of 133

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 137 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

1,039

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

999

96.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

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 Batley Grammar School 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 Batley Grammar School reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.2% 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 Batley Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 700 places 584 on roll 2012/13 700 places 674 on roll 2013/14 700 places 704 on roll 2014/15 700 places 693 on roll 2015/16 756 places 738 on roll 2016/17 925 places 772 on roll 2017/18 925 places 818 on roll 2018/19 925 places 899 on roll 2020/21 925 places 995 on roll 2021/22 925 places 1,013 on roll 2022/23 925 places 1,008 on roll 2023/24 925 places 1,007 on roll 2024/25 1,039 places 999 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kirklees

Postcode WF17 0AD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137487).

Other contested secondary schools in Kirklees

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.