School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Furness Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Furness Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 258 and 263 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

263 first preferences for 258 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Furness Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Furness 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 Westmorland and Furness 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 Westmorland and Furness, 43% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 128 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 Westmorland and Furness.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Westmorland and Furness 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

Furness 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 Furness 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 0.98 per place 164 first choices 168 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 173 first choices 174 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 181 first choices 183 places 2018/19 1 per place 220 first choices 220 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 265 first choices 239 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 293 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 267 first choices 232 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 263 first choices 244 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 297 first choices 241 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 269 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 260 first choices 254 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 263 first choices 258 places
First preferences per place at Furness Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 263 first preferences for 258 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Furness Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 168 164 164 0.98
2016/17 174 173 173 0.99
2017/18 183 181 181 0.99
2018/19 220 220 220 1
2019/20 239 265 239 1.11
2020/21 239 293 234 1.23
2021/22 232 267 232 1.15
2022/23 244 263 243 1.08
2023/24 241 297 241 1.23
2024/25 240 269 237 1.12
2025/26 254 260 250 1.02
2026/27 258 263 252 1.02

Places offered

258

in 2026/27

Named first choice

263

416 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.8%

252 of 263

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 258 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,182

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

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 Furness 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 Furness Academy reported 18 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Furness Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 1,728 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 1,513 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,353 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,184 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,005 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 839 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 776 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 756 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 777 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 862 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,058 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,103 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,154 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,191 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,182 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode LA13 9BB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135940).

Other contested secondary schools in Westmorland and Furness

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.