School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Outwood Academy Newbold?

In 2026/27, Outwood Academy Newbold offered 150 places and 130 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.87

first choices for every place available

130 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Outwood Academy Newbold

There is no published appeal success rate for Outwood Academy Newbold, 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

Outwood Academy Newbold turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Outwood Academy Newbold, 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 0.88 per place 152 first choices 173 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 128 first choices 164 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 131 first choices 139 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 167 first choices 174 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 214 first choices 170 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 234 first choices 174 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 232 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 224 first choices 175 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 198 first choices 176 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 175 first choices 171 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 162 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.87 per place 130 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Newbold. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 130 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Outwood Academy Newbold, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 173 152 146 0.88
2016/17 164 128 128 0.78
2017/18 139 131 131 0.94
2018/19 174 167 162 0.96
2019/20 170 214 157 1.26
2020/21 174 234 168 1.34
2021/22 176 232 171 1.32
2022/23 175 224 170 1.28
2023/24 176 198 171 1.12
2024/25 171 175 167 1.02
2025/26 172 162 158 0.94
2026/27 150 130 130 0.87

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

130

367 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

130 of 130

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 147 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

939

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

886

94.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

53

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Outwood Academy Newbold 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 Outwood Academy Newbold reported 53 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.4% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Outwood Academy Newbold from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,139 places 903 on roll 2015/16 1,139 places 896 on roll 2016/17 1,139 places 885 on roll 2017/18 1,139 places 884 on roll 2018/19 1,139 places 939 on roll 2020/21 1,139 places 1,051 on roll 2021/22 1,139 places 1,064 on roll 2022/23 1,139 places 1,030 on roll 2023/24 1,139 places 1,001 on roll 2024/25 1,139 places 1,006 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Outwood Academy Newbold has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Outwood Academy Newbold. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 September 2019 Arrangements did not comply REF3617

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 S41 8BA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141377).

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.