School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Grangefield Academy?

In 2026/27, The Grangefield Academy offered 195 places and 185 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Stockton-on-Tees actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

0.95

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 195 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Grangefield Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Grangefield 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 Stockton-on-Tees 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 Stockton-on-Tees, 30.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 44 of 144 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 Stockton-on-Tees.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stockton-on-Tees 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

The Grangefield Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 The Grangefield 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 0.82 per place 54 first choices 66 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 113 first choices 130 places 2017/18 0.83 per place 151 first choices 182 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 201 first choices 204 places 2019/20 0.68 per place 140 first choices 206 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 179 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 221 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 201 first choices 207 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 179 first choices 205 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 199 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 230 first choices 201 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 185 first choices 195 places
First preferences per place at The Grangefield Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 195 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Grangefield 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 66 54 54 0.82
2016/17 130 113 113 0.87
2017/18 182 151 151 0.83
2018/19 204 201 181 0.99
2019/20 206 140 140 0.68
2020/21 208 179 176 0.86
2021/22 205 221 177 1.08
2022/23 207 201 191 0.97
2023/24 205 179 179 0.87
2024/25 205 199 185 0.97
2025/26 201 230 200 1.14
2026/27 195 185 185 0.95

Places offered

195

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

449 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

185 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 195 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,006

95.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

44

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 Grangefield 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 Grangefield Academy reported 44 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.8% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Grangefield Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 875 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 735 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 587 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 563 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 630 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 742 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 935 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 993 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,016 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,003 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,006 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
Stockton-on-Tees

Postcode TS18 4LE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139673).

Other contested secondary schools in Stockton-on-Tees

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.