School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Ripley Academy?

In 2026/27, The Ripley Academy offered 149 places and 149 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.

1

first choices for every place available

149 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Ripley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Ripley 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 Ripley Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Ripley 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 108 first choices 109 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 115 first choices 117 places 2017/18 1 per place 115 first choices 115 places 2018/19 1 per place 110 first choices 110 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 120 first choices 119 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 108 first choices 112 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 166 first choices 170 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 156 first choices 159 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 165 first choices 166 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 187 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1 per place 156 first choices 156 places 2026/27 1 per place 149 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at The Ripley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 149 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Ripley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 109 108 108 0.99
2016/17 117 115 115 0.98
2017/18 115 115 115 1
2018/19 110 110 110 1
2019/20 119 120 119 1.01
2020/21 112 108 108 0.96
2021/22 170 166 166 0.98
2022/23 159 156 156 0.98
2023/24 166 165 165 0.99
2024/25 176 187 175 1.06
2025/26 156 156 156 1
2026/27 149 149 149 1

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

149

222 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

149 of 149

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 149 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

948

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

798

84.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

150

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

168

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 Ripley 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 Ripley Academy reported 150 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.2% 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 The Ripley Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,348 places 728 on roll 2015/16 1,348 places 658 on roll 2016/17 1,348 places 637 on roll 2017/18 1,348 places 658 on roll 2018/19 1,348 places 660 on roll 2020/21 1,116 places 720 on roll 2021/22 1,116 places 794 on roll 2022/23 1,116 places 838 on roll 2023/24 1,116 places 869 on roll 2024/25 1,116 places 890 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 DE5 3JQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141259).

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.