School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Weldon Village Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Weldon Village Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 145 put it first and 127 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in North Northamptonshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 3 years of official figures.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

145 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Weldon Village Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Weldon Village 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

Weldon Village Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 3 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 2 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 Weldon Village Academy, 2024/25 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 24/25 25/26 26/27 2024/25 0.9 per place 129 first choices 144 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 168 first choices 146 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 145 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Weldon Village Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 145 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Weldon Village Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2024/25 144 129 113 0.9
2025/26 146 168 129 1.15
2026/27 150 145 127 0.97

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

145

474 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.6%

127 of 145

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 150 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

296

24.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

904

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Weldon Village 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 Weldon Village Academy reported 904 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 24.7% 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.

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Northamptonshire

Postcode NN17 3GE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149775).

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.