School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Halewood Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Halewood Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 256 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

256 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Halewood Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Halewood 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 Knowsley 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 Knowsley, 20.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 54 of 260 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 Knowsley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Knowsley 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

Halewood Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Halewood 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 154 first choices 183 places 2016/17 0.8 per place 142 first choices 177 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 154 first choices 199 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 173 first choices 203 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 198 first choices 233 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 208 first choices 233 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 172 first choices 189 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 242 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 262 first choices 235 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 223 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 255 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 256 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Halewood Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 256 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Halewood Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 183 154 154 0.84
2016/17 177 142 140 0.8
2017/18 199 154 154 0.77
2018/19 203 173 173 0.85
2019/20 233 198 197 0.85
2020/21 233 208 207 0.89
2021/22 189 172 169 0.91
2022/23 238 242 217 1.02
2023/24 235 262 210 1.11
2024/25 234 223 214 0.95
2025/26 234 255 218 1.09
2026/27 236 256 216 1.08

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

256

432 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

216 of 256

Offers to families outside the council

43%

101 of 236 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

1,368

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,133

82.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

235

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 Halewood 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 Halewood Academy reported 235 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.8% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Halewood Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,401 places 1,029 on roll 2013/14 1,401 places 1,028 on roll 2014/15 1,401 places 961 on roll 2015/16 1,383 places 975 on roll 2016/17 1,383 places 910 on roll 2017/18 1,416 places 926 on roll 2018/19 1,476 places 962 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,067 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,082 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,098 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,136 on roll 2024/25 1,368 places 1,133 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
Knowsley

Postcode L26 1UU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139614).

Other contested secondary schools in Knowsley

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.