School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Morley Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 105 families who named The Morley Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 270 and 369 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

369 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Morley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Morley 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

The Morley Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 The Morley 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 0.92 per place 308 first choices 336 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 275 first choices 322 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 303 first choices 336 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 306 first choices 280 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 338 first choices 279 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 345 first choices 280 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 340 first choices 279 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 340 first choices 279 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 323 first choices 279 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 359 first choices 277 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 263 first choices 278 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 369 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at The Morley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 369 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Morley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 336 308 298 0.92
2016/17 322 275 275 0.85
2017/18 336 303 301 0.9
2018/19 280 306 272 1.09
2019/20 279 338 269 1.21
2020/21 280 345 267 1.23
2021/22 279 340 274 1.22
2022/23 279 340 272 1.22
2023/24 279 323 276 1.16
2024/25 277 359 275 1.3
2025/26 278 263 258 0.95
2026/27 270 369 264 1.37

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

369

869 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.5%

264 of 369

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 of 270 offers

How close you had to live

The Morley Academy filled its places in 2026, and 2,015m — 1.25 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 — In defined catchment area, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.25 mi

2,015 metres, 2026

Under criterion

4

In defined catchment area

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

1,615

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,415

87.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

200

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 The Morley 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 The Morley Academy reported 200 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.6% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Morley Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,555 places 1,576 on roll 2011/12 1,555 places 1,563 on roll 2012/13 1,555 places 1,559 on roll 2013/14 1,555 places 1,567 on roll 2014/15 1,555 places 1,572 on roll 2015/16 1,639 places 1,494 on roll 2016/17 1,555 places 1,453 on roll 2017/18 1,555 places 1,540 on roll 2018/19 1,555 places 1,537 on roll 2020/21 1,555 places 1,521 on roll 2021/22 1,555 places 1,472 on roll 2022/23 1,555 places 1,428 on roll 2023/24 1,555 places 1,430 on roll 2024/25 1,615 places 1,415 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 LS27 0PD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136392).

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.