School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Stopford School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 99 families who named Bishop Stopford School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 216 and 309 put it first.

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

1.43

first choices for every place available

309 first preferences for 216 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Stopford School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Stopford 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 North Northamptonshire 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 North Northamptonshire, 17% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 91 of 534 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 North Northamptonshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Northamptonshire 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

Bishop Stopford 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 Bishop Stopford 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 1.33 per place 269 first choices 202 places 2016/17 1.29 per place 258 first choices 200 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 237 first choices 208 places 2018/19 1.5 per place 310 first choices 206 places 2019/20 1.4 per place 296 first choices 211 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 270 first choices 211 places 2021/22 1.33 per place 281 first choices 212 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 235 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 283 first choices 209 places 2024/25 1.34 per place 281 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 257 first choices 212 places 2026/27 1.43 per place 309 first choices 216 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Stopford School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 309 first preferences for 216 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Stopford School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 202 269 191 1.33
2016/17 200 258 189 1.29
2017/18 208 237 198 1.14
2018/19 206 310 196 1.5
2019/20 211 296 202 1.4
2020/21 211 270 201 1.28
2021/22 212 281 203 1.33
2022/23 206 235 191 1.14
2023/24 209 283 202 1.35
2024/25 209 281 199 1.34
2025/26 212 257 199 1.21
2026/27 216 309 210 1.43

Places offered

216

in 2026/27

Named first choice

309

630 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68%

210 of 309

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 216 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,081

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

397

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 Bishop Stopford 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 Bishop Stopford 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 Bishop Stopford School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,383 places 1,444 on roll 2012/13 1,383 places 1,446 on roll 2013/14 1,383 places 1,433 on roll 2014/15 1,383 places 1,420 on roll 2015/16 1,383 places 1,414 on roll 2016/17 1,383 places 1,461 on roll 2017/18 1,383 places 1,474 on roll 2018/19 1,477 places 1,483 on roll 2020/21 1,477 places 1,475 on roll 2021/22 1,477 places 1,487 on roll 2022/23 1,477 places 1,487 on roll 2023/24 1,477 places 1,449 on roll 2024/25 1,477 places 1,457 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Northamptonshire

Postcode NN15 6BJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137086).

Other contested secondary schools in North Northamptonshire

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.