School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Denbigh School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 95 families who named Denbigh School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 327 put it first.

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

1.27

first choices for every place available

327 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Denbigh School

There is no published appeal success rate for Denbigh 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 Milton Keynes 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 Milton Keynes, 11.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 62 of 532 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 Milton Keynes.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Milton Keynes 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

Denbigh School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Denbigh 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 1.14 per place 296 first choices 259 places 2016/17 1.38 per place 354 first choices 257 places 2017/18 1.42 per place 367 first choices 259 places 2018/19 1.52 per place 390 first choices 257 places 2019/20 1.85 per place 476 first choices 257 places 2020/21 1.44 per place 372 first choices 259 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 309 first choices 256 places 2022/23 1.57 per place 399 first choices 254 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 359 first choices 252 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 283 first choices 257 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 295 first choices 258 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 327 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Denbigh School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 327 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Denbigh School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 259 296 234 1.14
2016/17 257 354 250 1.38
2017/18 259 367 240 1.42
2018/19 257 390 224 1.52
2019/20 257 476 223 1.85
2020/21 259 372 216 1.44
2021/22 256 309 202 1.21
2022/23 254 399 225 1.57
2023/24 252 359 222 1.42
2024/25 257 283 216 1.1
2025/26 258 295 224 1.14
2026/27 257 327 232 1.27

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

327

1,201 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.9%

232 of 327

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 257 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,309

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

380

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 Denbigh 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 Denbigh School reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Denbigh School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,285 places 1,341 on roll 2011/12 1,285 places 1,333 on roll 2012/13 1,285 places 1,372 on roll 2013/14 1,285 places 1,377 on roll 2014/15 1,285 places 1,374 on roll 2015/16 1,750 places 1,448 on roll 2016/17 1,700 places 1,533 on roll 2017/18 1,700 places 1,586 on roll 2018/19 1,700 places 1,691 on roll 2020/21 1,700 places 1,746 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,748 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,766 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,763 on roll 2024/25 1,700 places 1,778 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
Milton Keynes

Postcode MK5 6EX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136468).

Other contested secondary schools in Milton Keynes

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.