School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 87 families who named Abbey Grange Church of England Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 and 296 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Abbey Grange Church of England 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 Leeds 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 Leeds, 17.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 288 of 1,685 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 Leeds.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Leeds 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

Abbey Grange Church of England Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Abbey Grange Church of England 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 0.97 per place 230 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 297 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 343 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.57 per place 374 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.43 per place 384 first choices 268 places 2020/21 1.45 per place 347 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.61 per place 382 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.43 per place 344 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 326 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.32 per place 310 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 278 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 296 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 230 208 0.97
2016/17 240 297 217 1.24
2017/18 239 343 220 1.44
2018/19 238 374 221 1.57
2019/20 268 384 243 1.43
2020/21 239 347 211 1.45
2021/22 238 382 222 1.61
2022/23 240 344 225 1.43
2023/24 239 326 215 1.36
2024/25 234 310 206 1.32
2025/26 237 278 209 1.17
2026/27 237 296 209 1.25

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

1,030 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.6%

209 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 237 offers

How close you had to live

Abbey Grange Church of England Academy filled its places in 2026, and 2,406m — 1.50 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 8ii — World religions - remaining applications, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.50 mi

2,406 metres, 2026

Under criterion

8ii

World religions - remaining applications

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Leeds Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,455

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,202

82.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

253

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

225

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 Abbey Grange Church of England 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 Abbey Grange Church of England Academy reported 253 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Abbey Grange Church of England Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,152 places 1,223 on roll 2012/13 1,152 places 1,229 on roll 2013/14 1,152 places 1,310 on roll 2014/15 1,579 places 1,397 on roll 2015/16 1,579 places 1,426 on roll 2016/17 1,450 places 1,437 on roll 2017/18 1,450 places 1,503 on roll 2018/19 1,152 places 1,586 on roll 2020/21 1,425 places 1,588 on roll 2021/22 1,425 places 1,608 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,654 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,647 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,611 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Abbey Grange Church of England Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Abbey Grange Church of England Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
29 August 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3460

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leeds

Postcode LS16 5EA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137083).

Other contested secondary schools in Leeds

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.