School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Moor End Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Moor End Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 206 and 212 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

212 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Moor End Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Moor End 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

Moor End Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Moor End 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 1.02 per place 181 first choices 178 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 175 first choices 179 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 175 first choices 189 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 188 first choices 196 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 227 first choices 195 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 224 first choices 197 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 187 first choices 203 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 229 first choices 203 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 254 first choices 203 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 249 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 244 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 212 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Moor End Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 212 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Moor End Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 181 171 1.02
2016/17 179 175 175 0.98
2017/18 189 175 175 0.93
2018/19 196 188 187 0.96
2019/20 195 227 188 1.16
2020/21 197 224 191 1.14
2021/22 203 187 187 0.92
2022/23 203 229 201 1.13
2023/24 203 254 202 1.25
2024/25 205 249 201 1.21
2025/26 205 244 203 1.19
2026/27 206 212 201 1.03

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

212

382 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.8%

201 of 212

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 206 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Moor End Academy published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Moor End Academy, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children in public care (looked after children) and all previously looked after children, including those who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be as a result of being adopted.
2 Children who have a brother or sister attending the academy at the time of admission. (sibling rule) . NB: (brother or sister means; a child with at least one natural or legally adopted parent being the same person). Original documents may be requested by the Admissions Manager.
3 Children who are on roll at Beaumont Primary Academy at the time of application.
4 Children who live in the Academy’s PAA (proof of address and residency may be requested by the Admissions Manager).
5 Children who live outside the Academy’s PAA.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Moor End Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,060

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

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 Moor End 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 Moor End 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 Moor End 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 2011/12 933 places 730 on roll 2012/13 900 places 746 on roll 2013/14 900 places 771 on roll 2014/15 900 places 804 on roll 2015/16 900 places 854 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 910 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 944 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 975 on roll 2020/21 1,030 places 1,012 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,028 on roll 2022/23 1,040 places 1,043 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,060 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,060 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 5JA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137500).

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.