School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston Bushfield Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Ormiston Bushfield Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 218 and 221 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

221 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston Bushfield Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston Bushfield 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 Peterborough 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 Peterborough, 12.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 29 of 230 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 Peterborough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Peterborough 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

Ormiston Bushfield Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Ormiston Bushfield 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 0.93 per place 131 first choices 141 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 139 first choices 146 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 128 first choices 148 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 142 first choices 146 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 188 first choices 193 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 198 first choices 205 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 178 first choices 198 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 207 first choices 205 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 197 first choices 209 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 208 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 228 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 221 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston Bushfield Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 221 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston Bushfield Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 131 131 0.93
2016/17 146 139 138 0.95
2017/18 148 128 128 0.86
2018/19 146 142 141 0.97
2019/20 193 188 188 0.97
2020/21 205 198 194 0.97
2021/22 198 178 178 0.9
2022/23 205 207 197 1.01
2023/24 209 197 195 0.94
2024/25 204 208 191 1.02
2025/26 205 228 198 1.11
2026/27 218 221 208 1.01

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

221

409 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.1%

208 of 221

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 218 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,052

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

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 Ormiston Bushfield 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 Ormiston Bushfield Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ormiston Bushfield Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 950 places 709 on roll 2010/11 950 places 730 on roll 2011/12 950 places 771 on roll 2012/13 950 places 818 on roll 2013/14 950 places 832 on roll 2014/15 950 places 845 on roll 2015/16 950 places 837 on roll 2016/17 950 places 848 on roll 2017/18 950 places 857 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 897 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,002 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,047 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,104 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,203 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,224 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
Peterborough

Postcode PE2 5RQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135980).

Other contested secondary schools in Peterborough

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.