School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Christopher Hatton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 79 families who named Sir Christopher Hatton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 270 and 339 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.

1.26

first choices for every place available

339 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Christopher Hatton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Christopher Hatton 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

Sir Christopher Hatton Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Sir Christopher Hatton 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 0.97 per place 188 first choices 194 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 246 first choices 198 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 233 first choices 207 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 290 first choices 206 places 2019/20 1.34 per place 321 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.5 per place 352 first choices 235 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 326 first choices 234 places 2022/23 1.56 per place 364 first choices 233 places 2023/24 1.56 per place 369 first choices 236 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 325 first choices 264 places 2025/26 1.54 per place 361 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 339 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at Sir Christopher Hatton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 339 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Christopher Hatton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 194 188 188 0.97
2016/17 198 246 195 1.24
2017/18 207 233 192 1.13
2018/19 206 290 199 1.41
2019/20 240 321 230 1.34
2020/21 235 352 228 1.5
2021/22 234 326 228 1.39
2022/23 233 364 226 1.56
2023/24 236 369 224 1.56
2024/25 264 325 251 1.23
2025/26 235 361 228 1.54
2026/27 270 339 260 1.26

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

339

628 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.7%

260 of 339

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 270 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

1,226

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,269

103.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

43

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

214

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 Sir Christopher Hatton 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 Sir Christopher Hatton 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sir Christopher Hatton Academy 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 1,254 places 1,208 on roll 2012/13 1,254 places 1,172 on roll 2013/14 1,254 places 1,125 on roll 2014/15 1,254 places 1,138 on roll 2015/16 1,254 places 1,160 on roll 2016/17 1,254 places 1,191 on roll 2017/18 1,254 places 1,208 on roll 2018/19 1,254 places 1,221 on roll 2020/21 1,404 places 1,320 on roll 2021/22 1,404 places 1,380 on roll 2022/23 1,404 places 1,416 on roll 2023/24 1,414 places 1,469 on roll 2024/25 1,440 places 1,477 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Sir Christopher Hatton Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sir Christopher Hatton Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
18 September 2025 Arrangements did not comply REF4436, ADA4437, ADA4451

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
North Northamptonshire

Postcode NN8 4RP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137912).

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.