School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Corby Business Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Corby Business Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 146 put it first and 138 of them were offered one.

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

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

146 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Corby Business Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Corby Business 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 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

Corby Business Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Corby Business 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 0.94 per place 175 first choices 186 places 2016/17 0.65 per place 119 first choices 182 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 197 first choices 184 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 120 first choices 188 places 2019/20 0.78 per place 151 first choices 193 places 2020/21 0.84 per place 158 first choices 189 places 2021/22 0.6 per place 117 first choices 196 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 169 first choices 193 places 2023/24 0.78 per place 151 first choices 194 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 198 first choices 190 places 2025/26 0.77 per place 149 first choices 194 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 146 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at Corby Business Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 146 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Corby Business Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 186 175 124 0.94
2016/17 182 119 97 0.65
2017/18 184 197 149 1.07
2018/19 188 120 109 0.64
2019/20 193 151 113 0.78
2020/21 189 158 135 0.84
2021/22 196 117 117 0.6
2022/23 193 169 147 0.88
2023/24 194 151 135 0.78
2024/25 190 198 163 1.04
2025/26 194 149 135 0.77
2026/27 200 146 138 0.73

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

146

498 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.5%

138 of 146

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 200 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

1,029

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,030

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Corby Business 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 Corby Business Academy 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 Corby Business Academy 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 1,250 places 968 on roll 2010/11 1,250 places 1,008 on roll 2011/12 1,000 places 1,025 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 1,079 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 1,094 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,110 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,084 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,077 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,112 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,093 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,114 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,123 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,149 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,159 on roll 2024/25 1,279 places 1,178 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Northamptonshire

Postcode NN17 5EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135306).

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.