School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Mirfield Free Grammar?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Mirfield Free Grammar as their first choice did not get a place: 197 put it first and 178 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.

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

197 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Mirfield Free Grammar

There is no published appeal success rate for The Mirfield Free Grammar, 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

The Mirfield Free Grammar turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 1 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 The Mirfield Free Grammar, 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 1.62 per place 349 first choices 216 places 2016/17 1.74 per place 376 first choices 216 places 2017/18 1.65 per place 360 first choices 218 places 2018/19 1.52 per place 326 first choices 215 places 2019/20 1.34 per place 292 first choices 218 places 2020/21 1.27 per place 276 first choices 217 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 260 first choices 247 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 227 first choices 248 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 257 first choices 216 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 216 first choices 219 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 209 first choices 220 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 197 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at The Mirfield Free Grammar. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Mirfield Free Grammar, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 216 349 210 1.62
2016/17 216 376 211 1.74
2017/18 218 360 211 1.65
2018/19 215 326 212 1.52
2019/20 218 292 209 1.34
2020/21 217 276 205 1.27
2021/22 247 260 230 1.05
2022/23 248 227 217 0.92
2023/24 216 257 210 1.19
2024/25 219 216 198 0.99
2025/26 220 209 184 0.95
2026/27 218 197 178 0.9

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

629 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.4%

178 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 218 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

1,105

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,148

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

43

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 The Mirfield Free Grammar 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 The Mirfield Free Grammar 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Mirfield Free Grammar from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,360 places 1,447 on roll 2011/12 1,505 places 1,494 on roll 2012/13 1,505 places 1,538 on roll 2013/14 1,505 places 1,587 on roll 2014/15 1,505 places 1,559 on roll 2015/16 1,505 places 1,539 on roll 2016/17 1,505 places 1,536 on roll 2017/18 1,505 places 1,503 on roll 2018/19 1,505 places 1,510 on roll 2020/21 1,505 places 1,450 on roll 2021/22 1,505 places 1,449 on roll 2022/23 1,505 places 1,479 on roll 2023/24 1,505 places 1,435 on roll 2024/25 1,505 places 1,312 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 WF14 9EZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136674).

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.