School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Minsthorpe Community College?

In 2026/27, Minsthorpe Community College offered 279 places and 269 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.96

first choices for every place available

269 first preferences for 279 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Minsthorpe Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Minsthorpe Community College, 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

Minsthorpe Community College turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Minsthorpe Community College, 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 0.98 per place 242 first choices 247 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 268 first choices 279 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 245 first choices 248 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 248 first choices 255 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 283 first choices 292 places 2020/21 1 per place 283 first choices 283 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 282 first choices 285 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 295 first choices 291 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 272 first choices 280 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 303 first choices 290 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 310 first choices 288 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 269 first choices 279 places
First preferences per place at Minsthorpe Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 269 first preferences for 279 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Minsthorpe Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 247 242 242 0.98
2016/17 279 268 268 0.96
2017/18 248 245 245 0.99
2018/19 255 248 248 0.97
2019/20 292 283 283 0.97
2020/21 283 283 282 1
2021/22 285 282 282 0.99
2022/23 291 295 289 1.01
2023/24 280 272 272 0.97
2024/25 290 303 284 1.04
2025/26 288 310 285 1.08
2026/27 279 269 269 0.96

Places offered

279

in 2026/27

Named first choice

269

312 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

269 of 269

Offers to families outside the council

2%

6 of 274 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

1,833

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,387

75.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

446

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Minsthorpe Community College 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 Minsthorpe Community College reported 446 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 75.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Minsthorpe Community College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,755 places 1,639 on roll 2012/13 1,755 places 1,566 on roll 2013/14 1,755 places 1,496 on roll 2014/15 1,755 places 1,462 on roll 2015/16 1,405 places 1,450 on roll 2016/17 1,755 places 1,503 on roll 2017/18 1,755 places 1,488 on roll 2018/19 1,755 places 1,492 on roll 2020/21 1,755 places 1,583 on roll 2021/22 1,755 places 1,555 on roll 2022/23 1,755 places 1,567 on roll 2023/24 1,755 places 1,550 on roll 2024/25 2,183 places 1,545 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 WF9 2UJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137011).

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.