School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Staindrop Academy?

In 2026/27, Staindrop Academy offered 95 places and 94 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

94 first preferences for 95 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Staindrop Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Staindrop 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 County Durham 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 County Durham, 35.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 426 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 County Durham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not County Durham 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

Staindrop Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Staindrop Academy, 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 0.98 per place 53 first choices 54 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 53 first choices 56 places 2020/21 1 per place 61 first choices 61 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 78 first choices 80 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 83 first choices 87 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 84 first choices 86 places 2024/25 1 per place 115 first choices 115 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 117 first choices 115 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 94 first choices 95 places
First preferences per place at Staindrop Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 94 first preferences for 95 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Staindrop Academy, 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 54 53 53 0.98
2019/20 56 53 53 0.95
2020/21 61 61 61 1
2021/22 80 78 78 0.97
2022/23 87 83 83 0.95
2023/24 86 84 84 0.98
2024/25 115 115 114 1
2025/26 115 117 114 1.02
2026/27 95 94 94 0.99

Places offered

95

in 2026/27

Named first choice

94

171 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

94 of 94

Offers to families outside the council

3%

3 of 95 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

771

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

469

60.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

302

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 Staindrop 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 Staindrop Academy reported 302 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 60.8% 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 Staindrop Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 771 places 498 on roll 2018/19 771 places 452 on roll 2020/21 771 places 367 on roll 2021/22 771 places 362 on roll 2022/23 771 places 402 on roll 2023/24 771 places 426 on roll 2024/25 771 places 469 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
County Durham

Postcode DL2 3JU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144991).

Other contested secondary schools in County Durham

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.