School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 202 put it first and 182 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.

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

202 first preferences for 242 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary 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

Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary 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 0.76 per place 178 first choices 234 places 2016/17 0.77 per place 177 first choices 230 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 172 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 178 first choices 242 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 188 first choices 234 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 193 first choices 240 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 204 first choices 243 places 2022/23 0.73 per place 170 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.62 per place 168 first choices 273 places 2024/25 0.6 per place 173 first choices 290 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 213 first choices 244 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 202 first choices 242 places
First preferences per place at Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 242 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 178 177 0.76
2016/17 230 177 176 0.77
2017/18 237 172 166 0.73
2018/19 242 178 170 0.74
2019/20 234 188 176 0.8
2020/21 240 193 175 0.8
2021/22 243 204 182 0.84
2022/23 234 170 168 0.73
2023/24 273 168 167 0.62
2024/25 290 173 173 0.6
2025/26 244 213 189 0.87
2026/27 242 202 182 0.83

Places offered

242

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

522 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.1%

182 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

5%

13 of 242 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

1,405

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,387

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

186

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 Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary 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 Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Saint Benedict, A Catholic Voluntary Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,411 places 1,420 on roll 2013/14 1,411 places 1,429 on roll 2014/15 1,411 places 1,428 on roll 2015/16 1,411 places 1,361 on roll 2016/17 1,411 places 1,333 on roll 2017/18 1,411 places 1,328 on roll 2018/19 1,411 places 1,329 on roll 2020/21 1,411 places 1,360 on roll 2021/22 1,411 places 1,340 on roll 2022/23 1,411 places 1,336 on roll 2023/24 1,591 places 1,454 on roll 2024/25 1,591 places 1,525 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Derby

Postcode DE22 1JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138622).

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.