School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 249 and 255 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

255 first preferences for 249 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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

Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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 Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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 0.84 per place 208 first choices 247 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 285 first choices 244 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 251 first choices 247 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 269 first choices 246 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 268 first choices 247 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 267 first choices 246 places 2021/22 1.04 per place 259 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 256 first choices 248 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 211 first choices 249 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 235 first choices 246 places 2025/26 0.89 per place 220 first choices 247 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 255 first choices 249 places
First preferences per place at Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 255 first preferences for 249 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 247 208 205 0.84
2016/17 244 285 226 1.17
2017/18 247 251 225 1.02
2018/19 246 269 231 1.09
2019/20 247 268 217 1.09
2020/21 246 267 202 1.09
2021/22 249 259 210 1.04
2022/23 248 256 222 1.03
2023/24 249 211 201 0.85
2024/25 246 235 226 0.96
2025/26 247 220 218 0.89
2026/27 249 255 230 1.02

Places offered

249

in 2026/27

Named first choice

255

558 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.2%

230 of 255

Offers to families outside the council

10%

26 of 249 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 107780.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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 Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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 Previously looked after children including those children 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 (requirement in the Code) refers to those children who immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption order, (under section 46 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002), residence order (under section 8 of the Children Act 1989), or specialist guardianship order (under Section 14A of the Children Act 1989). Children looked after under an agreed series of short term placements (respite care) are excluded.
2 Children in priority 1 above may be admitted above the PAN.
3 The term ‘sibling’ is defined as: a full or half-brother or sister, a stepbrother or sister, an adoptive brother or sister, the children of parents living together in the same family household. Step-brother, step-sister, half-brother and half-sister are defined as children who belong to only one parent living in the same family household. The Governing Body will, as far as possible, admit twins, triplets or children from other multiple births as long as they comply with the infant class size regulations. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Distance is measured in a straight line from a child's home address to the school. Measurements are calculated using six-figure National Grid Co-ordinates from the National Land and Property Gazetteer. This grid reference relates to a point that falls within the permanent building structure corresponding to the address. The boundary of the building structure for the address is from Ordnance Survey's MasterMap. For smaller, residential properties the grid reference marks a point near the centre of the building. For larger properties, like schools with, for example, multiple buildings and large grounds, the grid reference relates to a point inside the main addressable building structure. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 ‘Live’ means the child’s permanent home at the date when applications close or, if a significant house move is involved, the latest reasonable date before the allocation of places.
6 Where a child’s parents live at different addresses and the child spends time at each address the Governing Body will consider the following when deciding on which address will be used for admissions purposes: – the amount of time spent at each address, which parent has parental responsibility for the child, who receives the child benefit for the child, where the child is registered for medical and dental care, any residency or custody orders made by the courts. The Governing Body will ask for documentary evidence to support information given about the above points.
7 Children with Education Health and Care Plans are admitted to the school separately from the general admission policies published (see below). Pupils with an Educational Health Care Plan Whitcliffe Mount shall ensure that children with an Educational Health Care Plan are admitted on an equal basis with others in accordance with its Admissions Policy. Where a local authority proposes to name Whitcliffe Mount in an Educational Health Care Plan made in accordance with section 324 of the Education Act 1996, Whitcliffe Mount shall consent to being named. […] criterion continues in the source document

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.

Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,240

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

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 Whitcliffe Mount, A Share 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 Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Whitcliffe Mount, A Share Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,267 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,195 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,149 on roll 2012/13 1,678 places 1,516 on roll 2013/14 1,678 places 1,334 on roll 2014/15 1,370 places 1,253 on roll 2015/16 1,428 places 1,188 on roll 2016/17 1,428 places 1,194 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,214 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,232 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,248 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,250 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,239 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,231 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,240 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 BD19 3AQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149162).

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.