School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Kimberley School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named The Kimberley School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 239 and 249 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

249 first preferences for 239 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Kimberley School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Kimberley 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 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

The Kimberley School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Kimberley 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 1 per place 241 first choices 240 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 225 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 263 first choices 240 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 227 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 259 first choices 234 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 266 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 259 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 264 first choices 241 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 276 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 280 first choices 237 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 250 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 249 first choices 239 places
First preferences per place at The Kimberley School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 249 first preferences for 239 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Kimberley School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 241 226 1
2016/17 240 225 225 0.94
2017/18 240 263 230 1.1
2018/19 240 227 224 0.95
2019/20 234 259 229 1.11
2020/21 240 266 237 1.11
2021/22 240 259 233 1.08
2022/23 241 264 237 1.1
2023/24 239 276 230 1.15
2024/25 237 280 228 1.18
2025/26 237 250 228 1.05
2026/27 239 249 227 1.04

Places offered

239

in 2026/27

Named first choice

249

448 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.2%

227 of 249

Offers to families outside the council

14%

33 of 239 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

1,199

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

205

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 Kimberley 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 Kimberley School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Kimberley School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,339 places 1,288 on roll 2013/14 1,373 places 1,286 on roll 2014/15 1,373 places 1,287 on roll 2015/16 1,346 places 1,266 on roll 2016/17 1,346 places 1,265 on roll 2017/18 1,346 places 1,296 on roll 2018/19 1,405 places 1,279 on roll 2020/21 1,375 places 1,364 on roll 2021/22 1,375 places 1,398 on roll 2022/23 1,405 places 1,386 on roll 2023/24 1,405 places 1,357 on roll 2024/25 1,405 places 1,377 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
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG16 2NJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138641).

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.