School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at BBG Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named BBG Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 264 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

264 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at BBG Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for BBG 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 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

BBG Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 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 BBG 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 1.11 per place 187 first choices 169 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 171 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 229 first choices 198 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 188 first choices 196 places 2019/20 1.39 per place 275 first choices 198 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 264 first choices 198 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 298 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 269 first choices 204 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 272 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 248 first choices 207 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 266 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 264 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at BBG Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 264 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at BBG Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 169 187 160 1.11
2016/17 177 171 164 0.97
2017/18 198 229 193 1.16
2018/19 196 188 176 0.96
2019/20 198 275 196 1.39
2020/21 198 264 190 1.33
2021/22 206 298 197 1.45
2022/23 204 269 194 1.32
2023/24 202 272 200 1.35
2024/25 207 248 202 1.2
2025/26 208 266 206 1.28
2026/27 204 264 198 1.29

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

264

572 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75%

198 of 264

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 204 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,034

103.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

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 BBG 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 BBG Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at BBG Academy 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 2011/12 380 places 355 on roll 2012/13 380 places 297 on roll 2013/14 750 places 389 on roll 2014/15 750 places 533 on roll 2015/16 750 places 693 on roll 2016/17 750 places 780 on roll 2017/18 750 places 873 on roll 2018/19 918 places 914 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 972 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,013 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,023 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,035 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,034 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. BBG Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming BBG Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
6 May 2021 No fault found ADA3756

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Kirklees

Postcode BD19 4BE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138111).

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.