School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Outwood Academy Freeston?

In 2026/27, Outwood Academy Freeston offered 175 places and 170 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Wakefield actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

0.97

first choices for every place available

170 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Outwood Academy Freeston

There is no published appeal success rate for Outwood Academy Freeston, 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

Outwood Academy Freeston turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Freeston, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.83 per place 156 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 182 first choices 195 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 191 first choices 201 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 180 first choices 196 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 209 first choices 198 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 168 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 211 first choices 204 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 170 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Freeston. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 170 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Outwood Academy Freeston, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 189 156 156 0.83
2020/21 195 182 182 0.93
2021/22 201 191 191 0.95
2022/23 196 180 180 0.92
2023/24 198 209 194 1.06
2024/25 170 168 168 0.99
2025/26 204 211 202 1.03
2026/27 175 170 170 0.97

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

170

238 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

170 of 170

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 172 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

982

86.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

155

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 Outwood Academy Freeston 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 Outwood Academy Freeston reported 155 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.4% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Outwood Academy Freeston from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,153 places 717 on roll 2018/19 1,153 places 714 on roll 2020/21 1,153 places 811 on roll 2021/22 1,153 places 890 on roll 2022/23 1,153 places 947 on roll 2023/24 1,153 places 1,007 on roll 2024/25 1,137 places 982 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 WF6 1HZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145937).

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.