School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy?

In 2026/27, St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy offered 102 places and 96 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Derbyshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

0.94

first choices for every place available

96 first preferences for 102 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary 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

St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.94 per place 58 first choices 62 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 94 first choices 99 places 2018/19 0.81 per place 95 first choices 118 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 90 first choices 117 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 122 first choices 119 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 132 first choices 118 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 139 first choices 114 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 115 first choices 112 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 108 first choices 113 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 127 first choices 113 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 96 first choices 102 places
First preferences per place at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 96 first preferences for 102 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 62 58 58 0.94
2017/18 99 94 94 0.95
2018/19 118 95 94 0.81
2019/20 117 90 79 0.77
2020/21 119 122 117 1.03
2021/22 118 132 115 1.12
2022/23 114 139 114 1.22
2023/24 112 115 112 1.03
2024/25 113 108 108 0.96
2025/26 113 127 111 1.12
2026/27 102 96 96 0.94

Places offered

102

in 2026/27

Named first choice

96

231 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

96 of 96

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 102 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

589

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

568

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

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 St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary 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 St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 485 places 466 on roll 2016/17 485 places 436 on roll 2017/18 485 places 443 on roll 2018/19 485 places 485 on roll 2020/21 485 places 552 on roll 2021/22 535 places 592 on roll 2022/23 589 places 592 on roll 2023/24 589 places 577 on roll 2024/25 589 places 568 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Derbyshire

Postcode SK13 8DR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142042).

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.