School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rushden Academy?

In 2026/27, Rushden Academy offered 175 places and 173 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in North Northamptonshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

0.99

first choices for every place available

173 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rushden Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Rushden 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

Rushden Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Rushden Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.86 per place 116 first choices 135 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 109 first choices 144 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 115 first choices 130 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 128 first choices 150 places 2023/24 0.72 per place 108 first choices 149 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 161 first choices 179 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 190 first choices 173 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 173 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Rushden Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 173 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rushden Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 135 116 116 0.86
2020/21 144 109 109 0.76
2021/22 130 115 115 0.88
2022/23 150 128 128 0.85
2023/24 149 108 108 0.72
2024/25 179 161 161 0.9
2025/26 173 190 168 1.1
2026/27 175 173 173 0.99

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

173

315 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

173 of 173

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 173 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

1,140

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

821

72% of capacity

Unfilled places

319

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

120

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 Rushden 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 Rushden Academy reported 319 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 72% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rushden Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,295 places 777 on roll 2020/21 1,295 places 798 on roll 2021/22 1,295 places 798 on roll 2022/23 1,295 places 846 on roll 2023/24 1,295 places 889 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 933 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 NN10 6AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146209).

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.