School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Darrick Wood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 107 families who named Darrick Wood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 235 and 300 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

300 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Darrick Wood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Darrick Wood School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Darrick Wood School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Darrick Wood School, 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 1.42 per place 369 first choices 260 places 2016/17 1.38 per place 345 first choices 250 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 303 first choices 259 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 348 first choices 259 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 344 first choices 270 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 302 first choices 267 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 268 first choices 255 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 299 first choices 253 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 340 first choices 250 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 281 first choices 249 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 265 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 300 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Darrick Wood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 300 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Darrick Wood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 260 369 233 1.42
2016/17 250 345 223 1.38
2017/18 259 303 213 1.17
2018/19 259 348 225 1.34
2019/20 270 344 241 1.27
2020/21 267 302 231 1.13
2021/22 255 268 196 1.05
2022/23 253 299 216 1.18
2023/24 250 340 207 1.36
2024/25 249 281 201 1.13
2025/26 237 265 187 1.12
2026/27 235 300 193 1.28

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

300

1,036 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.3%

193 of 300

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 235 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

1,267

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,297

102.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

30

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

500

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 Darrick Wood School 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 Darrick Wood School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Darrick Wood School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,825 places 1,721 on roll 2011/12 1,825 places 1,723 on roll 2012/13 1,825 places 1,699 on roll 2013/14 1,825 places 1,681 on roll 2014/15 1,825 places 1,701 on roll 2015/16 1,825 places 1,712 on roll 2016/17 1,825 places 1,701 on roll 2017/18 1,825 places 1,700 on roll 2018/19 1,825 places 1,676 on roll 2020/21 1,825 places 1,718 on roll 2021/22 1,825 places 1,712 on roll 2022/23 1,825 places 1,709 on roll 2023/24 1,825 places 1,696 on roll 2024/25 1,767 places 1,688 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
Bromley

Postcode BR6 8ER. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136355).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.