School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bay Leadership Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named Bay Leadership Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 136 and 213 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Lancashire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.57

first choices for every place available

213 first preferences for 136 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bay Leadership Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bay Leadership 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire, 28.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 768 of 2,706 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 Lancashire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lancashire 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

Bay Leadership Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bay Leadership Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.71 per place 110 first choices 154 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 106 first choices 143 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 132 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 160 first choices 178 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 178 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 178 first choices 144 places 2025/26 1.49 per place 219 first choices 147 places 2026/27 1.57 per place 213 first choices 136 places
First preferences per place at Bay Leadership Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 213 first preferences for 136 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bay Leadership Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 154 110 110 0.71
2020/21 143 106 106 0.74
2021/22 148 132 131 0.89
2022/23 178 160 155 0.9
2023/24 149 178 143 1.19
2024/25 144 178 144 1.24
2025/26 147 219 145 1.49
2026/27 136 213 136 1.57

Places offered

136

in 2026/27

Named first choice

213

407 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63.8%

136 of 213

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 136 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

1,316

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

713

54.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

603

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 Bay Leadership 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 Bay Leadership Academy reported 603 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 54.2% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bay Leadership Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,316 places 720 on roll 2020/21 1,316 places 669 on roll 2021/22 1,316 places 661 on roll 2022/23 1,316 places 688 on roll 2023/24 1,316 places 694 on roll 2024/25 1,316 places 713 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
Lancashire

Postcode LA3 1AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144646).

Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire

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.