School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Macmillan Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 144 families who named Macmillan Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 382 put it first.

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

1.49

first choices for every place available

382 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Macmillan Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Macmillan 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 Middlesbrough 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 Middlesbrough, 10.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 34 of 318 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 Middlesbrough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Middlesbrough 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

Macmillan Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Macmillan Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.2 per place 496 first choices 225 places 2016/17 1.72 per place 408 first choices 237 places 2017/18 1.5 per place 406 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.37 per place 359 first choices 262 places 2019/20 1.4 per place 365 first choices 261 places 2020/21 1.44 per place 378 first choices 262 places 2021/22 1.33 per place 349 first choices 263 places 2022/23 1.39 per place 365 first choices 263 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 345 first choices 271 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 335 first choices 261 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 341 first choices 256 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 382 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Macmillan Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 382 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Macmillan Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 496 223 2.2
2016/17 237 408 232 1.72
2017/18 270 406 258 1.5
2018/19 262 359 253 1.37
2019/20 261 365 234 1.4
2020/21 262 378 231 1.44
2021/22 263 349 227 1.33
2022/23 263 365 232 1.39
2023/24 271 345 231 1.27
2024/25 261 335 231 1.28
2025/26 256 341 241 1.33
2026/27 257 382 238 1.49

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

382

957 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.3%

238 of 382

Offers to families outside the council

4%

10 of 257 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,274

94.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

76

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

375

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 Macmillan 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 Macmillan Academy reported 76 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.4% 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 Macmillan Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,435 places 1,465 on roll 2010/11 1,435 places 1,504 on roll 2011/12 1,550 places 1,471 on roll 2012/13 1,550 places 1,468 on roll 2013/14 1,550 places 1,506 on roll 2014/15 1,550 places 1,511 on roll 2015/16 1,550 places 1,497 on roll 2016/17 1,550 places 1,479 on roll 2017/18 1,550 places 1,502 on roll 2018/19 1,725 places 1,560 on roll 2020/21 1,725 places 1,555 on roll 2021/22 1,725 places 1,575 on roll 2022/23 1,725 places 1,515 on roll 2023/24 1,725 places 1,524 on roll 2024/25 1,725 places 1,553 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. Macmillan Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Macmillan Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
10 September 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2719

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Middlesbrough

Postcode TS5 4AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 130908).

Other contested secondary schools in Middlesbrough

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.