School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wath Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 158 families who named Wath Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 322 and 479 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Rotherham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1.49

first choices for every place available

479 first preferences for 322 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wath Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wath 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 Rotherham 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 Rotherham, 50.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 232 of 460 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 Rotherham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rotherham 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

Wath Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 7 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Wath Academy, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.93 per place 259 first choices 280 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 299 first choices 317 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 315 first choices 334 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 406 first choices 323 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 446 first choices 310 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 384 first choices 313 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 479 first choices 322 places
First preferences per place at Wath Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 479 first preferences for 322 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wath Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 280 259 259 0.93
2021/22 317 299 299 0.94
2022/23 334 315 315 0.94
2023/24 323 406 302 1.26
2024/25 310 446 300 1.44
2025/26 313 384 308 1.23
2026/27 322 479 321 1.49

Places offered

322

in 2026/27

Named first choice

479

737 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67%

321 of 479

Offers to families outside the council

11%

36 of 322 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

1,686

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,613

95.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

73

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Wath 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 Wath Academy reported 73 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.7% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wath Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,950 places 1,767 on roll 2020/21 1,950 places 1,859 on roll 2021/22 1,950 places 1,904 on roll 2022/23 1,950 places 1,971 on roll 2023/24 1,950 places 1,982 on roll 2024/25 2,086 places 2,021 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
Rotherham

Postcode S63 7NW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145848).

Other contested secondary schools in Rotherham

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.