School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brayton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Brayton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 231 and 238 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in North Yorkshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.03

first choices for every place available

238 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brayton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Brayton 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 Yorkshire 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 Yorkshire, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 87 of 411 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 Yorkshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Yorkshire 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

Brayton Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 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 Brayton Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.82 per place 75 first choices 91 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 75 first choices 89 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 130 first choices 158 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 176 first choices 182 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 197 first choices 213 places 2022/23 0.74 per place 128 first choices 173 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 204 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 183 first choices 228 places 2025/26 0.76 per place 165 first choices 217 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 238 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at Brayton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brayton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 91 75 75 0.82
2018/19 89 75 75 0.84
2019/20 158 130 130 0.82
2020/21 182 176 176 0.97
2021/22 213 197 197 0.92
2022/23 173 128 128 0.74
2023/24 208 204 180 0.98
2024/25 228 183 183 0.8
2025/26 217 165 165 0.76
2026/27 231 238 226 1.03

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

517 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95%

226 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 231 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

1,205

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

928

77% of capacity

Unfilled places

277

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 Brayton 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 Brayton Academy reported 277 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 77% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Brayton Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,207 places 372 on roll 2017/18 1,208 places 380 on roll 2018/19 1,208 places 406 on roll 2020/21 1,208 places 587 on roll 2021/22 1,208 places 696 on roll 2022/23 1,208 places 782 on roll 2023/24 1,208 places 868 on roll 2024/25 1,205 places 928 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. Brayton Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Brayton Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
30 March 2023 Arrangements did not comply REF4103

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
North Yorkshire

Postcode YO8 9QS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143138).

Other contested secondary schools in North Yorkshire

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.