School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at New Mills School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named New Mills School as their first choice did not get a place: 123 put it first and 112 of them were offered one.

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

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

123 first preferences for 143 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at New Mills School

There is no published appeal success rate for New Mills 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

New Mills School 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 New Mills 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 0.82 per place 84 first choices 103 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 97 first choices 112 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 69 first choices 70 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 105 first choices 126 places 2019/20 0.72 per place 105 first choices 146 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 115 first choices 128 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 104 first choices 113 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 145 first choices 147 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 134 first choices 146 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 118 first choices 143 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 140 first choices 137 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 123 first choices 143 places
First preferences per place at New Mills School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 123 first preferences for 143 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at New Mills School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 103 84 84 0.82
2016/17 112 97 97 0.87
2017/18 70 69 69 0.99
2018/19 126 105 105 0.83
2019/20 146 105 105 0.72
2020/21 128 115 115 0.9
2021/22 113 104 103 0.92
2022/23 147 145 144 0.99
2023/24 146 134 134 0.92
2024/25 143 118 118 0.83
2025/26 137 140 126 1.02
2026/27 143 123 112 0.86

Places offered

143

in 2026/27

Named first choice

123

323 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.1%

112 of 123

Offers to families outside the council

31%

44 of 143 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

672

89.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

78

across Years 7 to 11

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 New Mills 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 New Mills School reported 78 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.6% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at New Mills School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,038 places 676 on roll 2010/11 1,038 places 618 on roll 2011/12 1,038 places 586 on roll 2012/13 1,038 places 570 on roll 2013/14 1,038 places 572 on roll 2014/15 1,038 places 537 on roll 2015/16 1,038 places 542 on roll 2016/17 1,038 places 539 on roll 2017/18 1,038 places 496 on roll 2018/19 1,038 places 519 on roll 2020/21 831 places 617 on roll 2021/22 831 places 609 on roll 2022/23 831 places 664 on roll 2023/24 750 places 663 on roll 2024/25 750 places 672 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 SK22 4NR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112936).

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.