School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Manor Croft Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named Manor Croft Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 225 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

225 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Manor Croft Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Manor Croft 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

Manor Croft Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Manor Croft 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 0.49 per place 87 first choices 177 places 2016/17 0.57 per place 73 first choices 127 places 2017/18 0.57 per place 86 first choices 152 places 2018/19 0.73 per place 127 first choices 173 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 167 first choices 208 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 192 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.04 per place 218 first choices 209 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 235 first choices 208 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 212 first choices 207 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 239 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 231 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 225 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at Manor Croft Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 225 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Manor Croft Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 87 87 0.49
2016/17 127 73 73 0.57
2017/18 152 86 86 0.57
2018/19 173 127 127 0.73
2019/20 208 167 167 0.8
2020/21 207 192 175 0.93
2021/22 209 218 200 1.04
2022/23 208 235 197 1.13
2023/24 207 212 199 1.02
2024/25 204 239 201 1.17
2025/26 204 231 193 1.13
2026/27 203 225 195 1.11

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

225

431 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.7%

195 of 225

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 203 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

1,031

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

19

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 Manor Croft 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 Manor Croft Academy reported 19 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Manor Croft Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 900 places 680 on roll 2014/15 900 places 629 on roll 2015/16 900 places 635 on roll 2016/17 900 places 593 on roll 2017/18 900 places 636 on roll 2018/19 900 places 727 on roll 2020/21 900 places 879 on roll 2021/22 900 places 951 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,009 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,031 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kirklees

Postcode WF12 7DW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139076).

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.