School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King James's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named King James's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 206 and 220 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

220 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King James's School

There is no published appeal success rate for King James's 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

King James's School 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 King James's 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 1.24 per place 218 first choices 176 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 205 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.34 per place 238 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 212 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 225 first choices 186 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 222 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 249 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 221 first choices 207 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 195 first choices 213 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 233 first choices 213 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 197 first choices 207 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 220 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at King James's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King James's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 176 218 173 1.24
2016/17 177 205 170 1.16
2017/18 177 238 176 1.34
2018/19 178 212 176 1.19
2019/20 186 225 179 1.21
2020/21 207 222 198 1.07
2021/22 210 249 199 1.19
2022/23 207 221 197 1.07
2023/24 213 195 187 0.92
2024/25 213 233 211 1.09
2025/26 207 197 197 0.95
2026/27 206 220 206 1.07

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

367 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.6%

206 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 206 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,063

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

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 King James's 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 King James's School 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King James's School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 900 places 887 on roll 2013/14 900 places 888 on roll 2014/15 900 places 879 on roll 2015/16 900 places 896 on roll 2016/17 900 places 900 on roll 2017/18 900 places 905 on roll 2018/19 900 places 904 on roll 2020/21 900 places 1,034 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,032 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,031 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,055 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,063 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
Kirklees

Postcode HD4 6SG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138706).

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.