School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Scalby Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Scalby Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 210 put it first and 201 of them were offered one.

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

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

210 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Scalby Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Scalby 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

Scalby Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Scalby 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 1.36 per place 259 first choices 190 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 252 first choices 191 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 246 first choices 191 places 2018/19 1.46 per place 275 first choices 188 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 283 first choices 189 places 2020/21 1.49 per place 276 first choices 185 places 2021/22 1.33 per place 255 first choices 192 places 2022/23 1.38 per place 258 first choices 187 places 2023/24 1.32 per place 239 first choices 181 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 207 first choices 184 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 233 first choices 231 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 210 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Scalby Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Scalby Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 190 259 188 1.36
2016/17 191 252 187 1.32
2017/18 191 246 185 1.29
2018/19 188 275 184 1.46
2019/20 189 283 182 1.5
2020/21 185 276 181 1.49
2021/22 192 255 191 1.33
2022/23 187 258 187 1.38
2023/24 181 239 178 1.32
2024/25 184 207 170 1.12
2025/26 231 233 222 1.01
2026/27 229 210 201 0.92

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

201 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 229 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 121677.

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

1,017

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

959

94.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

58

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 Scalby 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 Scalby Academy reported 58 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.3% 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 Scalby Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,060 places 875 on roll 2010/11 997 places 880 on roll 2011/12 1,060 places 890 on roll 2012/13 1,060 places 944 on roll 2013/14 1,060 places 977 on roll 2014/15 996 places 997 on roll 2015/16 983 places 1,015 on roll 2016/17 982 places 999 on roll 2017/18 1,060 places 979 on roll 2018/19 1,017 places 974 on roll 2020/21 1,017 places 994 on roll 2021/22 1,017 places 984 on roll 2022/23 1,017 places 981 on roll 2023/24 1,017 places 974 on roll 2024/25 1,017 places 959 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
North Yorkshire

Postcode YO12 6TH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143288).

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.