School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brookfield Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Brookfield Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 183 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

183 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brookfield Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Brookfield Community 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 Derbyshire 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 Derbyshire, 29.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 185 of 620 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 Derbyshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Derbyshire 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

Brookfield Community School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Brookfield Community 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 1.32 per place 225 first choices 171 places 2016/17 1.28 per place 222 first choices 173 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 168 first choices 174 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 166 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 171 first choices 175 places 2020/21 0.84 per place 150 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 165 first choices 179 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 147 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 169 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 174 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 194 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 183 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Brookfield Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 183 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brookfield Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 171 225 169 1.32
2016/17 173 222 167 1.28
2017/18 174 168 161 0.97
2018/19 178 166 165 0.93
2019/20 175 171 162 0.98
2020/21 178 150 149 0.84
2021/22 179 165 163 0.92
2022/23 172 147 147 0.85
2023/24 177 169 165 0.95
2024/25 170 174 166 1.02
2025/26 174 194 169 1.11
2026/27 173 183 168 1.06

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

183

390 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.8%

168 of 183

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 173 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

730

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

898

123% of capacity

Over its capacity by

168

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Brookfield Community 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 Brookfield Community 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 Brookfield Community School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,080 places 1,284 on roll 2011/12 1,080 places 1,318 on roll 2012/13 1,090 places 1,348 on roll 2013/14 1,090 places 1,320 on roll 2014/15 1,090 places 1,293 on roll 2015/16 1,090 places 1,245 on roll 2016/17 1,090 places 1,217 on roll 2017/18 1,090 places 1,178 on roll 2018/19 1,090 places 1,123 on roll 2020/21 1,090 places 1,072 on roll 2021/22 1,090 places 1,095 on roll 2022/23 1,090 places 1,105 on roll 2023/24 1,090 places 1,139 on roll 2024/25 1,090 places 1,170 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
Derbyshire

Postcode S40 3NS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136548).

Other contested secondary schools in Derbyshire

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.