School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Granville Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Granville Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 182 and 203 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

203 first preferences for 182 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Granville Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Granville 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

Granville Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Granville 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 0.97 per place 106 first choices 109 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 95 first choices 96 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 158 first choices 159 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 151 first choices 157 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 151 first choices 184 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 135 first choices 172 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 108 first choices 162 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 157 first choices 178 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 149 first choices 178 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 147 first choices 164 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 171 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 203 first choices 182 places
First preferences per place at Granville Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 203 first preferences for 182 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Granville Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 109 106 106 0.97
2016/17 96 95 95 0.99
2017/18 159 158 158 0.99
2018/19 157 151 151 0.96
2019/20 184 151 147 0.82
2020/21 172 135 135 0.78
2021/22 162 108 108 0.67
2022/23 178 157 157 0.88
2023/24 178 149 149 0.84
2024/25 164 147 147 0.9
2025/26 180 171 166 0.95
2026/27 182 203 179 1.12

Places offered

182

in 2026/27

Named first choice

203

312 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.2%

179 of 203

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 182 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 112940.

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

830

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

902

108.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

72

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 Granville 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 Granville 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Granville Academy 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 2009/10 830 places 713 on roll 2010/11 830 places 699 on roll 2011/12 830 places 646 on roll 2012/13 830 places 601 on roll 2013/14 830 places 562 on roll 2014/15 830 places 567 on roll 2015/16 830 places 548 on roll 2016/17 830 places 561 on roll 2017/18 830 places 623 on roll 2018/19 830 places 694 on roll 2020/21 830 places 767 on roll 2021/22 830 places 804 on roll 2022/23 830 places 823 on roll 2023/24 830 places 885 on roll 2024/25 830 places 902 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 DE11 7JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144533).

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.