School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cockburn School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Cockburn School as their first choice did not get a place: 285 put it first and 254 of them were offered one.

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

31

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

285 first preferences for 295 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cockburn School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cockburn School, 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

Cockburn School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Cockburn School, 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 1.32 per place 359 first choices 271 places 2016/17 1.58 per place 380 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 389 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.47 per place 352 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.43 per place 335 first choices 234 places 2020/21 1.51 per place 359 first choices 238 places 2021/22 1.41 per place 336 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 283 first choices 265 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 299 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.36 per place 324 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 296 first choices 269 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 285 first choices 295 places
First preferences per place at Cockburn School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 285 first preferences for 295 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cockburn School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 271 359 259 1.32
2016/17 240 380 231 1.58
2017/18 270 389 249 1.44
2018/19 240 352 211 1.47
2019/20 234 335 212 1.43
2020/21 238 359 213 1.51
2021/22 238 336 214 1.41
2022/23 265 283 232 1.07
2023/24 240 299 219 1.25
2024/25 239 324 223 1.36
2025/26 269 296 244 1.1
2026/27 295 285 254 0.97

Places offered

295

in 2026/27

Named first choice

285

892 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

254 of 285

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 295 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 108065.

How close you had to live

Cockburn School filled its places in 2026, and 2,066m — 1.28 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

1.28 mi

2,066 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

1,270

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,268

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

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 Cockburn School 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 Cockburn School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cockburn School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,519 places 1,049 on roll 2010/11 1,314 places 1,072 on roll 2011/12 1,314 places 1,090 on roll 2012/13 1,325 places 1,094 on roll 2013/14 1,325 places 1,107 on roll 2014/15 1,325 places 1,142 on roll 2015/16 1,325 places 1,182 on roll 2016/17 1,387 places 1,191 on roll 2017/18 1,387 places 1,242 on roll 2018/19 1,387 places 1,253 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,268 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,258 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,278 on roll 2023/24 1,270 places 1,263 on roll 2024/25 1,270 places 1,268 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 LS11 5TT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142585).

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.