School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trinity Academy Cathedral?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 128 families who named Trinity Academy Cathedral as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 196 and 311 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Wakefield actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

1.59

first choices for every place available

311 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trinity Academy Cathedral

There is no published appeal success rate for Trinity Academy Cathedral, 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

Trinity Academy Cathedral turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 9 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Trinity Academy Cathedral, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.62 per place 122 first choices 198 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 155 first choices 197 places 2020/21 1.18 per place 235 first choices 200 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 233 first choices 198 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 285 first choices 198 places 2023/24 1.48 per place 296 first choices 200 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 294 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.54 per place 304 first choices 198 places 2026/27 1.59 per place 311 first choices 196 places
First preferences per place at Trinity Academy Cathedral. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 311 first preferences for 196 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trinity Academy Cathedral, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 198 122 120 0.62
2019/20 197 155 153 0.79
2020/21 200 235 198 1.18
2021/22 198 233 190 1.18
2022/23 198 285 195 1.44
2023/24 200 296 195 1.48
2024/25 204 294 201 1.44
2025/26 198 304 191 1.54
2026/27 196 311 183 1.59

Places offered

196

in 2026/27

Named first choice

311

596 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.8%

183 of 311

Offers to families outside the council

5%

10 of 196 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,034

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

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 Trinity Academy Cathedral 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 Trinity Academy Cathedral reported 16 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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 Trinity Academy Cathedral from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,050 places 770 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 823 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 969 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 998 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,026 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,026 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,034 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Trinity Academy Cathedral has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Trinity Academy Cathedral. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 September 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3950, ADA3951

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 8QF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145579).

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.