School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Beacon Academy?

In 2026/27, Beacon Academy offered 114 places and 78 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.68

first choices for every place available

78 first preferences for 114 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Beacon Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Beacon 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 North East Lincolnshire 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 North East Lincolnshire, 40.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 38 of 94 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 North East Lincolnshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North East Lincolnshire 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

Beacon Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Beacon 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 0.96 per place 23 first choices 24 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 36 first choices 43 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 42 first choices 46 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 61 first choices 82 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 83 first choices 90 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 115 first choices 108 places 2021/22 1.4 per place 162 first choices 116 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 159 first choices 140 places 2023/24 1.48 per place 201 first choices 136 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 188 first choices 139 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 170 first choices 141 places 2026/27 0.68 per place 78 first choices 114 places
First preferences per place at Beacon Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 78 first preferences for 114 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Beacon 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 24 23 23 0.96
2016/17 43 36 36 0.84
2017/18 46 42 42 0.91
2018/19 82 61 61 0.74
2019/20 90 83 82 0.92
2020/21 108 115 99 1.06
2021/22 116 162 111 1.4
2022/23 140 159 136 1.14
2023/24 136 201 127 1.48
2024/25 139 188 138 1.35
2025/26 141 170 140 1.21
2026/27 114 78 78 0.68

Places offered

114

in 2026/27

Named first choice

78

234 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

78 of 78

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 94 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

648

86.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

102

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 Beacon 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 Beacon Academy reported 102 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.4% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Beacon Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 500 places 297 on roll 2014/15 500 places 264 on roll 2015/16 500 places 201 on roll 2016/17 500 places 218 on roll 2017/18 500 places 270 on roll 2018/19 500 places 333 on roll 2020/21 500 places 448 on roll 2021/22 500 places 503 on roll 2022/23 600 places 570 on roll 2023/24 750 places 622 on roll 2024/25 750 places 648 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North East Lincolnshire

Postcode DN35 9NF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139649).

Other contested secondary schools in North East Lincolnshire

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.