Refused a place at The Brian Clarke Church of England Academy?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 312 families who named The Brian Clarke Church of England Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 224 and 458 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Oldham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 4 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
458 first preferences for 224 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at The Brian Clarke Church of England Academy
There is no published appeal success rate for The Brian Clarke Church of England 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 Oldham 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 Oldham, 10% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 74 of 740 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 Oldham.
What a panel here can act on
These are national rules, not Oldham ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
The Brian Clarke Church of England Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 4 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023/24 | 236 | 270 | 158 | 1.14 |
| 2024/25 | 232 | 484 | 178 | 2.09 |
| 2025/26 | 228 | 461 | 162 | 2.02 |
| 2026/27 | 224 | 458 | 146 | 2.04 |
Places offered
224
in 2026/27
Named first choice
458
1,241 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
31.9%
146 of 458
Offers to families outside the council
1%
2 of 224 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
1,200
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
717
59.8% of capacity
Unfilled places
483
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 Brian Clarke Church of England 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 Brian Clarke Church of England Academy reported 483 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 59.8% 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, 2022/23 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Oldham does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Free schools
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- Faith
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Oldham
Postcode OL9 6BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149137).
Other contested secondary schools in Oldham
- The Blue Coat CofE School 2.63 first choices per place
- The Crompton House Church of England Academy 1.12 first choices per place
- North Chadderton School 1.10 first choices per place
- The Hathershaw College 0.83 first choices per place
- Saint John Henry Newman Roman Catholic College, A Voluntary Academy 0.70 first choices per place
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.