School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Ferrers School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named The Ferrers School as their first choice did not get a place: 143 put it first and 142 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.

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

143 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Ferrers School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Ferrers 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

The Ferrers School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 The Ferrers 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 0.95 per place 156 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1 per place 205 first choices 204 places 2017/18 1 per place 205 first choices 204 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 208 first choices 175 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 137 first choices 152 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 122 first choices 144 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 154 first choices 165 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 149 first choices 162 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 206 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 190 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 157 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 143 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at The Ferrers School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 143 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Ferrers School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 165 156 156 0.95
2016/17 204 205 201 1
2017/18 204 205 194 1
2018/19 175 208 166 1.19
2019/20 152 137 137 0.9
2020/21 144 122 122 0.85
2021/22 165 154 154 0.93
2022/23 162 149 149 0.92
2023/24 173 206 164 1.19
2024/25 175 190 169 1.09
2025/26 172 157 157 0.91
2026/27 149 143 142 0.96

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

143

338 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

142 of 143

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 148 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

843

93.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

57

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 The Ferrers 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 The Ferrers School reported 57 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.7% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Ferrers School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,200 places 974 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 966 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 995 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,029 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,051 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,021 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 972 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 947 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 910 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 911 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 935 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
North Northamptonshire

Postcode NN10 8LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139988).

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.