School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Serlby Park Academy?

In 2026/27, Serlby Park Academy offered 56 places and 49 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Nottinghamshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

0.88

first choices for every place available

49 first preferences for 56 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Serlby Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Serlby Park 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 Nottinghamshire 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 Nottinghamshire, 24.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 340 of 1,374 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 Nottinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Nottinghamshire 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

Serlby Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Serlby Park 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 ratio not published 10 first choices 14 places 2016/17 ratio not published 15 first choices 17 places 2017/18 1 per place 25 first choices 25 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 24 first choices 25 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 30 first choices 33 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 46 first choices 51 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 39 first choices 53 places 2022/23 0.62 per place 29 first choices 47 places 2023/24 0.73 per place 40 first choices 55 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 40 first choices 48 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 67 first choices 58 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 49 first choices 56 places
First preferences per place at Serlby Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 49 first preferences for 56 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Serlby Park 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 14 10 10 too small to publish
2016/17 17 15 15 too small to publish
2017/18 25 25 25 1
2018/19 25 24 24 0.96
2019/20 33 30 30 0.91
2020/21 51 46 46 0.9
2021/22 53 39 39 0.74
2022/23 47 29 29 0.62
2023/24 55 40 39 0.73
2024/25 48 40 40 0.83
2025/26 58 67 52 1.16
2026/27 56 49 49 0.88

Places offered

56

in 2026/27

Named first choice

49

114 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

49 of 49

Offers to families outside the council

2%

1 of 54 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

1,170

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

946

80.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

224

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Serlby Park 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 Serlby Park Academy reported 224 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 80.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Serlby Park Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,068 places 891 on roll 2012/13 1,068 places 841 on roll 2013/14 1,169 places 815 on roll 2014/15 1,169 places 768 on roll 2015/16 1,169 places 727 on roll 2016/17 1,169 places 759 on roll 2017/18 1,169 places 779 on roll 2018/19 1,230 places 782 on roll 2020/21 1,170 places 822 on roll 2021/22 1,170 places 855 on roll 2022/23 1,170 places 873 on roll 2023/24 1,170 places 902 on roll 2024/25 1,170 places 946 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
Nottinghamshire

Postcode DN11 8EF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137141).

Other contested secondary schools in Nottinghamshire

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.