School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at West Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named West Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 279 and 296 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 279 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at West Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for West Park 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 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

West Park 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 West Park 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 1.09 per place 267 first choices 246 places 2016/17 1.03 per place 256 first choices 249 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 284 first choices 256 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 334 first choices 276 places 2019/20 1.59 per place 328 first choices 206 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 355 first choices 285 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 327 first choices 284 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 352 first choices 284 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 351 first choices 286 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 292 first choices 279 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 302 first choices 289 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 296 first choices 279 places
First preferences per place at West Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 279 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at West Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 246 267 242 1.09
2016/17 249 256 241 1.03
2017/18 256 284 251 1.11
2018/19 276 334 272 1.21
2019/20 206 328 202 1.59
2020/21 285 355 279 1.25
2021/22 284 327 279 1.15
2022/23 284 352 282 1.24
2023/24 286 351 282 1.23
2024/25 279 292 264 1.05
2025/26 289 302 279 1.04
2026/27 279 296 276 1.06

Places offered

279

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

461 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.2%

276 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

23%

64 of 279 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria West Park School published for 2027 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 West Park School, 2027 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 Looked After Children and all previously Looked After Children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.
2 Those children residing in the normal area served by the school, who have stated West Park as their preferred secondary school through the Common Application Form by the national closing date and who reside in the normal area at the national offer date and at the time of their admission.
3 Those who have an elder sibling in Year 8 to 11 who will still be attending West Park at the proposed admission date.
4 Children of all staff employed by the school where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made or the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
5 When Governors consider that there are medical grounds for admitting the pupil supported by a doctor’s certificate.
6 Other children whose parents have requested a place.
7 Children whose parents did not request a place by the national closing date.

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 2027 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.

West Park School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 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

1,450

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,458

100.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

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 West Park 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 West Park 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 West Park School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,350 places 1,292 on roll 2011/12 1,250 places 1,263 on roll 2012/13 1,272 places 1,281 on roll 2013/14 1,272 places 1,244 on roll 2014/15 1,272 places 1,249 on roll 2015/16 1,272 places 1,256 on roll 2016/17 1,272 places 1,278 on roll 2017/18 1,272 places 1,290 on roll 2018/19 1,272 places 1,316 on roll 2020/21 1,450 places 1,407 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,441 on roll 2022/23 1,450 places 1,472 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,464 on roll 2024/25 1,450 places 1,458 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 DE21 7BT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136634).

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.