School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wrenn School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named Wrenn School as their first choice did not get a place: 251 put it first and 246 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.

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

251 first preferences for 290 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wrenn School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wrenn 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

Wrenn School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Wrenn 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 0.88 per place 133 first choices 151 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 131 first choices 158 places 2017/18 0.72 per place 114 first choices 158 places 2018/19 0.58 per place 84 first choices 144 places 2019/20 0.75 per place 162 first choices 216 places 2020/21 0.66 per place 155 first choices 234 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 180 first choices 236 places 2022/23 0.69 per place 161 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.72 per place 183 first choices 253 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 213 first choices 254 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 240 first choices 256 places 2026/27 0.87 per place 251 first choices 290 places
First preferences per place at Wrenn School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 251 first preferences for 290 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wrenn School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 151 133 133 0.88
2016/17 158 131 131 0.83
2017/18 158 114 114 0.72
2018/19 144 84 84 0.58
2019/20 216 162 162 0.75
2020/21 234 155 155 0.66
2021/22 236 180 180 0.76
2022/23 234 161 161 0.69
2023/24 253 183 175 0.72
2024/25 254 213 211 0.84
2025/26 256 240 203 0.94
2026/27 290 251 246 0.87

Places offered

290

in 2026/27

Named first choice

251

618 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98%

246 of 251

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 290 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

1,432

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,310

91.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

122

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 Wrenn 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 Wrenn School reported 122 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.5% 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 Wrenn School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,632 places 1,253 on roll 2014/15 1,632 places 1,182 on roll 2015/16 1,632 places 1,132 on roll 2016/17 1,632 places 1,042 on roll 2017/18 1,632 places 1,031 on roll 2018/19 1,632 places 1,081 on roll 2020/21 1,632 places 1,225 on roll 2021/22 1,632 places 1,307 on roll 2022/23 1,632 places 1,362 on roll 2023/24 1,632 places 1,431 on roll 2024/25 1,632 places 1,474 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. Wrenn School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Wrenn School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
31 August 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3972

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

Postcode NN8 2DQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139961).

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.