School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at David Nieper Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named David Nieper Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 166 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Derbyshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.11

first choices for every place available

166 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at David Nieper Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for David Nieper 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 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

David Nieper Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at David Nieper Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.71 per place 48 first choices 68 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 105 first choices 112 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 109 first choices 135 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 106 first choices 127 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 149 first choices 142 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 167 first choices 146 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 157 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 180 first choices 148 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 158 first choices 145 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 166 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at David Nieper Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 166 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at David Nieper Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 68 48 48 0.71
2018/19 112 105 105 0.94
2019/20 135 109 109 0.81
2020/21 127 106 105 0.83
2021/22 142 149 133 1.05
2022/23 146 167 146 1.14
2023/24 149 157 147 1.05
2024/25 148 180 146 1.22
2025/26 145 158 144 1.09
2026/27 149 166 148 1.11

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

166

296 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.2%

148 of 166

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 149 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

673

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

718

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

45

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

150

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 David Nieper 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 David Nieper Academy 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at David Nieper Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,036 places 370 on roll 2017/18 850 places 405 on roll 2018/19 850 places 473 on roll 2020/21 850 places 594 on roll 2021/22 850 places 682 on roll 2022/23 850 places 755 on roll 2023/24 850 places 765 on roll 2024/25 823 places 805 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Derbyshire

Postcode DE55 7JA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142405).

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.