School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chapel-en-le-Frith High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Chapel-en-le-Frith High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 158 and 185 put it first.

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

1.17

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 158 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chapel-en-le-Frith High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chapel-en-le-Frith High 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

Chapel-en-le-Frith High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Chapel-en-le-Frith High 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 1.12 per place 198 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 208 first choices 179 places 2017/18 1 per place 206 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 222 first choices 177 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 188 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 196 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 171 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 182 first choices 184 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 200 first choices 193 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 197 first choices 160 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 173 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.17 per place 185 first choices 158 places
First preferences per place at Chapel-en-le-Frith High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 158 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chapel-en-le-Frith High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 198 174 1.12
2016/17 179 208 176 1.16
2017/18 205 206 201 1
2018/19 177 222 176 1.25
2019/20 175 188 173 1.07
2020/21 176 196 175 1.11
2021/22 175 171 171 0.98
2022/23 184 182 180 0.99
2023/24 193 200 192 1.04
2024/25 160 197 160 1.23
2025/26 172 173 172 1.01
2026/27 158 185 158 1.17

Places offered

158

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

296 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.4%

158 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 158 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

925

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

938

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

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 Chapel-en-le-Frith High 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 Chapel-en-le-Frith High 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chapel-en-le-Frith High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 946 places 907 on roll 2010/11 946 places 888 on roll 2011/12 946 places 868 on roll 2012/13 946 places 914 on roll 2013/14 946 places 924 on roll 2014/15 946 places 923 on roll 2015/16 946 places 932 on roll 2016/17 946 places 943 on roll 2017/18 925 places 948 on roll 2018/19 925 places 947 on roll 2020/21 925 places 938 on roll 2021/22 925 places 949 on roll 2022/23 925 places 926 on roll 2023/24 925 places 945 on roll 2024/25 925 places 938 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Derbyshire

Postcode SK23 0TQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112932).

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.