School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 76 families who named St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 137 and 201 put it first.

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

1.47

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 137 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary 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

St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary 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 0.91 per place 100 first choices 110 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 124 first choices 128 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 113 first choices 125 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 148 first choices 146 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 161 first choices 140 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 122 first choices 130 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 133 first choices 144 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 115 first choices 124 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 146 first choices 141 places 2024/25 1 per place 144 first choices 144 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 178 first choices 143 places 2026/27 1.47 per place 201 first choices 137 places
First preferences per place at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 137 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 110 100 98 0.91
2016/17 128 124 124 0.97
2017/18 125 113 113 0.9
2018/19 146 148 131 1.01
2019/20 140 161 131 1.15
2020/21 130 122 122 0.94
2021/22 144 133 130 0.92
2022/23 124 115 115 0.93
2023/24 141 146 132 1.04
2024/25 144 144 133 1
2025/26 143 178 136 1.24
2026/27 137 201 125 1.47

Places offered

137

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

448 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.2%

125 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 137 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

830

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

761

91.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

69

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 St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary 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 St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy reported 69 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.7% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Thomas à Becket Catholic Secondary School, A Voluntary Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 830 places 765 on roll 2013/14 830 places 707 on roll 2014/15 830 places 695 on roll 2015/16 830 places 686 on roll 2016/17 830 places 710 on roll 2017/18 830 places 715 on roll 2018/19 830 places 744 on roll 2020/21 830 places 747 on roll 2021/22 830 places 753 on roll 2022/23 830 places 750 on roll 2023/24 830 places 735 on roll 2024/25 830 places 761 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wakefield

Postcode WF2 6EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138950).

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.