School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Ecclesbourne School?

In 2026/27, The Ecclesbourne School offered 239 places and 229 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.

0.96

first choices for every place available

229 first preferences for 239 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Ecclesbourne School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Ecclesbourne 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 Ecclesbourne School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Ecclesbourne 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 1.13 per place 268 first choices 237 places 2016/17 1 per place 237 first choices 236 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 288 first choices 235 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 248 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 282 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 266 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 249 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 260 first choices 237 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 256 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 266 first choices 232 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 256 first choices 233 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 229 first choices 239 places
First preferences per place at The Ecclesbourne School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 229 first preferences for 239 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Ecclesbourne School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 237 268 234 1.13
2016/17 236 237 233 1
2017/18 235 288 235 1.23
2018/19 235 248 232 1.06
2019/20 235 282 233 1.2
2020/21 234 266 232 1.14
2021/22 235 249 231 1.06
2022/23 237 260 236 1.1
2023/24 239 256 235 1.07
2024/25 232 266 230 1.15
2025/26 233 256 232 1.1
2026/27 239 229 229 0.96

Places offered

239

in 2026/27

Named first choice

229

393 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

229 of 229

Offers to families outside the council

31%

74 of 239 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

1,255

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,192

95% of capacity

Unfilled places

63

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

348

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 Ecclesbourne 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 Ecclesbourne School reported 63 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Ecclesbourne School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,369 places 1,441 on roll 2011/12 1,369 places 1,419 on roll 2012/13 1,369 places 1,417 on roll 2013/14 1,369 places 1,402 on roll 2014/15 1,369 places 1,416 on roll 2015/16 1,369 places 1,428 on roll 2016/17 1,369 places 1,430 on roll 2017/18 1,603 places 1,458 on roll 2018/19 1,603 places 1,489 on roll 2020/21 1,603 places 1,547 on roll 2021/22 1,603 places 1,584 on roll 2022/23 1,603 places 1,599 on roll 2023/24 1,603 places 1,575 on roll 2024/25 1,603 places 1,574 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. The Ecclesbourne School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Ecclesbourne School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 July 2017 Arrangements did not comply ADA3254

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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Derbyshire

Postcode DE56 4GS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136505).

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.