School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Boston Spa Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Boston Spa Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 238 and 259 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

259 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Boston Spa Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Boston Spa 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

Boston Spa 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 Boston Spa 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 0.81 per place 110 first choices 136 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 123 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 136 first choices 169 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 164 first choices 187 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 172 first choices 192 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 177 first choices 222 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 284 first choices 278 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 218 first choices 243 places 2023/24 0.79 per place 214 first choices 270 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 288 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 298 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 259 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at Boston Spa Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 259 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Boston Spa Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 136 110 110 0.81
2016/17 148 123 123 0.83
2017/18 169 136 136 0.8
2018/19 187 164 163 0.88
2019/20 192 172 172 0.9
2020/21 222 177 177 0.8
2021/22 278 284 253 1.02
2022/23 243 218 217 0.9
2023/24 270 214 214 0.79
2024/25 238 288 227 1.21
2025/26 236 298 228 1.26
2026/27 238 259 225 1.09

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

259

733 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.9%

225 of 259

Offers to families outside the council

7%

17 of 238 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 108091.

How close you had to live

Boston Spa Academy filled its places in 2026, and 9,267m — 5.76 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 — Any other children, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

5.76 mi

9,267 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

Any other children

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

1,491

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,266

84.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

225

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

305

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 Boston Spa 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 Boston Spa Academy reported 225 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.9% 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 Boston Spa Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,803 places 1,687 on roll 2010/11 1,684 places 1,623 on roll 2011/12 1,684 places 1,473 on roll 2012/13 1,684 places 1,318 on roll 2013/14 1,890 places 1,121 on roll 2014/15 1,890 places 1,006 on roll 2015/16 1,890 places 939 on roll 2016/17 1,890 places 869 on roll 2017/18 1,357 places 876 on roll 2018/19 1,357 places 893 on roll 2020/21 1,357 places 1,116 on roll 2021/22 1,800 places 1,272 on roll 2022/23 1,796 places 1,360 on roll 2023/24 1,796 places 1,426 on roll 2024/25 1,796 places 1,463 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
Leeds

Postcode LS23 6RW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146217).

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.