School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Castleford Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Castleford Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 280 and 291 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

291 first preferences for 280 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Castleford Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Castleford 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 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

Castleford 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 Castleford 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 per place 252 first choices 253 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 268 first choices 250 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 286 first choices 262 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 286 first choices 263 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 318 first choices 291 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 327 first choices 295 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 337 first choices 291 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 338 first choices 286 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 340 first choices 289 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 300 first choices 291 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 316 first choices 279 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 291 first choices 280 places
First preferences per place at Castleford Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 291 first preferences for 280 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Castleford Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 253 252 252 1
2016/17 250 268 247 1.07
2017/18 262 286 262 1.09
2018/19 263 286 263 1.09
2019/20 291 318 290 1.09
2020/21 295 327 287 1.11
2021/22 291 337 291 1.16
2022/23 286 338 283 1.18
2023/24 289 340 286 1.18
2024/25 291 300 289 1.03
2025/26 279 316 278 1.13
2026/27 280 291 278 1.04

Places offered

280

in 2026/27

Named first choice

291

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.5%

278 of 291

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 280 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

1,545

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,473

95.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

72

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 Castleford 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 Castleford Academy reported 72 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.3% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Castleford Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,200 places 1,212 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,249 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,182 on roll 2013/14 1,224 places 1,229 on roll 2014/15 1,224 places 1,261 on roll 2015/16 1,224 places 1,240 on roll 2016/17 1,224 places 1,266 on roll 2017/18 1,224 places 1,315 on roll 2018/19 1,274 places 1,369 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,459 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,480 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,498 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,506 on roll 2024/25 1,545 places 1,473 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 WF10 4JQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136633).

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.