School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Pingle Academy?

In 2026/27, The Pingle Academy offered 204 places and 175 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.

0.86

first choices for every place available

175 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Pingle Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Pingle 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

The Pingle Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Pingle Academy, 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 0.99 per place 146 first choices 147 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 165 first choices 167 places 2017/18 1 per place 204 first choices 204 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 221 first choices 225 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 278 first choices 274 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 286 first choices 214 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 319 first choices 217 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 280 first choices 210 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 279 first choices 226 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 256 first choices 218 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 237 first choices 220 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 175 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at The Pingle Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Pingle Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 146 146 0.99
2016/17 167 165 165 0.99
2017/18 204 204 204 1
2018/19 225 221 221 0.98
2019/20 274 278 249 1.01
2020/21 214 286 211 1.34
2021/22 217 319 212 1.47
2022/23 210 280 208 1.33
2023/24 226 279 220 1.23
2024/25 218 256 213 1.17
2025/26 220 237 214 1.08
2026/27 204 175 175 0.86

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

350 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

175 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 189 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 112995.

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

1,199

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,150

95.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

49

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

241

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 Pingle 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 The Pingle Academy reported 49 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Pingle Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,376 places 1,214 on roll 2010/11 1,376 places 1,179 on roll 2011/12 1,376 places 1,190 on roll 2012/13 1,376 places 1,156 on roll 2013/14 1,376 places 1,083 on roll 2014/15 1,376 places 1,046 on roll 2015/16 1,376 places 1,021 on roll 2016/17 1,376 places 1,023 on roll 2017/18 1,376 places 1,054 on roll 2018/19 1,376 places 1,149 on roll 2020/21 1,376 places 1,352 on roll 2021/22 1,376 places 1,395 on roll 2022/23 1,440 places 1,421 on roll 2023/24 1,440 places 1,411 on roll 2024/25 1,440 places 1,374 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 DE11 0QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144069).

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.