School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Horbury Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Horbury Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 198 and 234 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

234 first preferences for 198 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Horbury Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Horbury 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

Horbury Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Horbury 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 1.07 per place 220 first choices 206 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 226 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 236 first choices 204 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 262 first choices 201 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 227 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 183 first choices 203 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 180 first choices 226 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 177 first choices 231 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 224 first choices 201 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 181 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 225 first choices 198 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 234 first choices 198 places
First preferences per place at Horbury Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 234 first preferences for 198 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Horbury Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 206 220 196 1.07
2016/17 210 226 203 1.08
2017/18 204 236 202 1.16
2018/19 201 262 196 1.3
2019/20 207 227 206 1.1
2020/21 203 183 183 0.9
2021/22 226 180 180 0.8
2022/23 231 177 177 0.77
2023/24 201 224 194 1.11
2024/25 204 181 179 0.89
2025/26 198 225 185 1.14
2026/27 198 234 191 1.18

Places offered

198

in 2026/27

Named first choice

234

596 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.6%

191 of 234

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 198 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

1,059

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,067

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

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 Horbury 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 Horbury Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Horbury Academy 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 1,059 places 1,039 on roll 2013/14 1,059 places 1,046 on roll 2014/15 1,059 places 1,050 on roll 2015/16 1,059 places 1,045 on roll 2016/17 1,059 places 1,032 on roll 2017/18 1,059 places 1,039 on roll 2018/19 1,059 places 1,022 on roll 2020/21 1,059 places 1,024 on roll 2021/22 1,059 places 1,070 on roll 2022/23 1,059 places 1,101 on roll 2023/24 1,059 places 1,086 on roll 2024/25 1,059 places 1,067 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 WF4 5HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138707).

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.