School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Derby Moor Spencer Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Derby Moor Spencer Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 239 put it first and 214 of them were offered one.

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

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

239 first preferences for 296 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Derby Moor Spencer Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Derby Moor Spencer 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 Derby 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 Derby, 17.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 159 of 892 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 Derby.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Derby 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

Derby Moor Spencer Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Derby Moor Spencer 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 0.85 per place 224 first choices 264 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 240 first choices 264 places 2017/18 0.89 per place 237 first choices 266 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 221 first choices 263 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 276 first choices 281 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 247 first choices 297 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 267 first choices 295 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 284 first choices 288 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 254 first choices 295 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 245 first choices 292 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 253 first choices 299 places 2026/27 0.81 per place 239 first choices 296 places
First preferences per place at Derby Moor Spencer Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 239 first preferences for 296 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Derby Moor Spencer Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 264 224 207 0.85
2016/17 264 240 202 0.91
2017/18 266 237 182 0.89
2018/19 263 221 170 0.84
2019/20 281 276 220 0.98
2020/21 297 247 201 0.83
2021/22 295 267 223 0.91
2022/23 288 284 225 0.99
2023/24 295 254 203 0.86
2024/25 292 245 225 0.84
2025/26 299 253 222 0.85
2026/27 296 239 214 0.81

Places offered

296

in 2026/27

Named first choice

239

701 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.5%

214 of 239

Offers to families outside the council

4%

12 of 292 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 112952.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Derby Moor Spencer Academy published for 2028 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Derby Moor Spencer Academy, 2028 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 A 'looked after child' or a child who, appears (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England or was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, residence, or special guardianship order 67. A looked after child is a child who is (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989).
2 Children who are both living1 in the Normal Area2 or Catchment Area served by the school and have siblings3 (brothers or sisters) of compulsory school age still attending the school at the time of their admission.
3 Other children living1 in the catchment area at the closing date for applications and will reassess applications on the National Offer Date. .
4 Children who do not live1 in the Normal Area2 served by the school but who have siblings3 (brothers or sisters) of compulsory school age attending the school at the time of their admission.
5 Other children whose parents have requested a place.
6 Children whose parents did not request a place by the Local Authority deadline for completion of the Common Application Form. The home address is defined as the address of the adult with parental responsibility with whom the child normally lives and which applies at the time of application. Applications based on future addresses can only be considered up to 6 teaching weeks before the child is expected to take up the place and upon confirmation of a minimum of six-month tenancy agreement or exchange of contracts. A map showing the catchment area or normal area and/or further information can be obtained from the school. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2028 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Derby Moor Spencer Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2028 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,461

97.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

39

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

245

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 Derby Moor Spencer 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 Derby Moor Spencer Academy reported 39 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.4% 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 Derby Moor Spencer 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 1,361 places 1,315 on roll 2010/11 1,361 places 1,338 on roll 2011/12 1,361 places 1,354 on roll 2012/13 1,545 places 1,445 on roll 2013/14 1,580 places 1,509 on roll 2014/15 1,575 places 1,525 on roll 2015/16 1,575 places 1,490 on roll 2016/17 1,575 places 1,481 on roll 2017/18 1,575 places 1,495 on roll 2018/19 1,575 places 1,506 on roll 2020/21 1,745 places 1,588 on roll 2021/22 1,745 places 1,634 on roll 2022/23 1,745 places 1,670 on roll 2023/24 1,745 places 1,727 on roll 2024/25 1,745 places 1,702 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
Derby

Postcode DE23 2FS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145327).

Other contested secondary schools in Derby

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.