School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Carleton High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Carleton High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 199 and 251 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

251 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Carleton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Carleton High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wakefield 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 Wakefield, 21.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 79 of 370 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 Wakefield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wakefield 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

Carleton High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Carleton High School, 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 0.94 per place 152 first choices 161 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 121 first choices 156 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 153 first choices 160 places 2018/19 0.72 per place 129 first choices 179 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 153 first choices 170 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 163 first choices 186 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 169 first choices 171 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 223 first choices 204 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 201 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 242 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 224 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 251 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Carleton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 251 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Carleton High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 161 152 152 0.94
2016/17 156 121 121 0.78
2017/18 160 153 153 0.96
2018/19 179 129 129 0.72
2019/20 170 153 153 0.9
2020/21 186 163 163 0.88
2021/22 171 169 169 0.99
2022/23 204 223 189 1.09
2023/24 204 201 198 0.99
2024/25 204 242 203 1.19
2025/26 206 224 198 1.09
2026/27 199 251 199 1.26

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

251

470 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.3%

199 of 251

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 199 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

1,137

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,015

89.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

122

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 Carleton High School 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 Carleton High School reported 122 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.3% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Carleton High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,050 places 745 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 741 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 759 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 796 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 826 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 861 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 878 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 961 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 976 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2024/25 1,137 places 1,015 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
Wakefield

Postcode WF8 3NW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139501).

Other contested secondary schools in Wakefield

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.