School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ridgewood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Ridgewood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 231 and 239 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

239 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ridgewood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ridgewood 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 Doncaster 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 Doncaster, 24.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 137 of 553 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 Doncaster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Doncaster 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

Ridgewood School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Ridgewood 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 1.07 per place 240 first choices 225 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 260 first choices 239 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 226 first choices 233 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 214 first choices 229 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 217 first choices 239 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 212 first choices 239 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 222 first choices 239 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 228 first choices 235 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 234 first choices 252 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 218 first choices 241 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 241 first choices 247 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 239 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at Ridgewood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 239 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ridgewood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 240 223 1.07
2016/17 239 260 239 1.09
2017/18 233 226 221 0.97
2018/19 229 214 214 0.93
2019/20 239 217 211 0.91
2020/21 239 212 208 0.89
2021/22 239 222 220 0.93
2022/23 235 228 221 0.97
2023/24 252 234 230 0.93
2024/25 241 218 212 0.9
2025/26 247 241 236 0.98
2026/27 231 239 225 1.03

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

239

393 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.1%

225 of 239

Offers to families outside the council

4%

10 of 231 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,186

123.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

226

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Ridgewood 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 Ridgewood 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ridgewood School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,460 places 1,343 on roll 2012/13 1,460 places 1,425 on roll 2013/14 1,477 places 1,431 on roll 2014/15 1,477 places 1,422 on roll 2015/16 1,477 places 1,402 on roll 2016/17 1,477 places 1,422 on roll 2017/18 1,567 places 1,386 on roll 2018/19 1,562 places 1,369 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,386 on roll 2021/22 1,529 places 1,386 on roll 2022/23 1,529 places 1,388 on roll 2023/24 1,529 places 1,440 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,449 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
Doncaster

Postcode DN5 7UB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137603).

Other contested secondary schools in Doncaster

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.