School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Bolsover School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named The Bolsover School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 209 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Bolsover School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Bolsover 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

The Bolsover School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 The Bolsover 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 0.93 per place 112 first choices 120 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 127 first choices 130 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 153 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 142 first choices 162 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 162 first choices 164 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 143 first choices 149 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 167 first choices 166 places 2022/23 1 per place 194 first choices 194 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 179 first choices 195 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 206 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 172 first choices 167 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 209 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at The Bolsover School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Bolsover School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 120 112 112 0.93
2016/17 130 127 126 0.98
2017/18 180 153 152 0.85
2018/19 162 142 142 0.88
2019/20 164 162 147 0.99
2020/21 149 143 143 0.96
2021/22 166 167 163 1.01
2022/23 194 194 191 1
2023/24 195 179 179 0.92
2024/25 204 206 199 1.01
2025/26 167 172 161 1.03
2026/27 174 209 169 1.2

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

330 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.9%

169 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 174 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

899

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 The Bolsover 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 The Bolsover School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Bolsover School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 876 places 783 on roll 2013/14 876 places 781 on roll 2014/15 876 places 762 on roll 2015/16 850 places 766 on roll 2016/17 850 places 783 on roll 2017/18 850 places 822 on roll 2018/19 850 places 790 on roll 2020/21 850 places 815 on roll 2021/22 850 places 834 on roll 2022/23 850 places 854 on roll 2023/24 850 places 879 on roll 2024/25 900 places 899 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 S44 6XA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138836).

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.