School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wilsthorpe School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 70 families who named Wilsthorpe School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 271 put it first.

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

1.33

first choices for every place available

271 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wilsthorpe School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wilsthorpe 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

Wilsthorpe School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Wilsthorpe 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 0.99 per place 159 first choices 161 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 151 first choices 161 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 159 first choices 163 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 218 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 236 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 264 first choices 205 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 242 first choices 205 places 2022/23 1.39 per place 291 first choices 209 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 206 first choices 212 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 269 first choices 210 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 258 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 271 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Wilsthorpe School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 271 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wilsthorpe School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 161 159 159 0.99
2016/17 161 151 151 0.94
2017/18 163 159 159 0.98
2018/19 216 218 212 1.01
2019/20 208 236 197 1.13
2020/21 205 264 200 1.29
2021/22 205 242 204 1.18
2022/23 209 291 208 1.39
2023/24 212 206 206 0.97
2024/25 210 269 209 1.28
2025/26 203 258 203 1.27
2026/27 204 271 201 1.33

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

271

487 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.2%

201 of 271

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 204 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 112935.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Wilsthorpe School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Wilsthorpe School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked After Children and all previously Looked After Children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.
2 Children living in the normal area served by the school at the time of application and admission who have brothers or sisters attending the school at the time of application and admission.
3 Children living in the normal area served by the school at the time of application and admission.
4 Children who live outside the catchment area but who are attending one of the linked primary schools in Ashfield School’s family of schools on the closing date for applications preceding admission to secondary school and who will have a brother or sister at Ashfield School at the time of admission.
5 Children not living in the normal area served by the school but who have brothers or sisters attending the school at the time of application and admission.
6 Children who live outside the catchment area but who are attending a linked primary phase school on the closing date for secondary applications.
7 Other children whose parents/carers have requested a place. Sixth Form The Published Admission number is 100 external places with a total of 300 students in Year 12. Ashfield School Sixth form is committed to providing places on an open-access basis. Our entry requirements are generic and indicative only. The sixth form is committed to recruiting with integrity. Careers education and information, advice and guidance is provided at all stages and takes into account a range of factors including GCSE score, predicted grade, actual grade and other factors. The Sixth Form reserves the right to refuse admission to a course in some cases, even where the generic requirements are met. […] criterion continues in the source document
• Looked After Children and all previously Looked After Children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.
• Children who do not presently attend the school, but who meet the academic entry requirements. In the event of oversubscription of the above criteria, proximity to the school will be used with those living nearer to the school given priority. Distance measurement is as the crow flies from the home address to the school using google maps. Entry Requirements A Levels: You need a minimum of 6 GCSEs at Grade 5 or better (one of which must be English or Maths) Individual subjects will also have set their own requirements. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Wilsthorpe School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,062

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

12

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Wilsthorpe 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 Wilsthorpe School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wilsthorpe School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,268 places 856 on roll 2010/11 1,268 places 818 on roll 2011/12 1,268 places 780 on roll 2012/13 1,268 places 741 on roll 2013/14 1,268 places 763 on roll 2014/15 984 places 749 on roll 2015/16 984 places 788 on roll 2016/17 984 places 823 on roll 2017/18 984 places 896 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 962 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,100 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,139 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,189 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,193 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,223 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 NG10 4WT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146451).

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.