School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ingleby Manor Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Ingleby Manor Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 145 and 188 put it first.

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

1.30

first choices for every place available

188 first preferences for 145 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ingleby Manor Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ingleby Manor Free 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 Stockton-on-Tees 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 Stockton-on-Tees, 30.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 44 of 144 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 Stockton-on-Tees.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stockton-on-Tees 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

Ingleby Manor Free School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 1 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 Ingleby Manor Free 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 0.92 per place 82 first choices 89 places 2016/17 1.05 per place 122 first choices 116 places 2017/18 1.93 per place 224 first choices 116 places 2018/19 1.35 per place 150 first choices 111 places 2019/20 0.65 per place 91 first choices 141 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 72 first choices 117 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 97 first choices 117 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 122 first choices 143 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 131 first choices 142 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 171 first choices 141 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 135 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.3 per place 188 first choices 145 places
First preferences per place at Ingleby Manor Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 188 first preferences for 145 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ingleby Manor Free 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 89 82 82 0.92
2016/17 116 122 114 1.05
2017/18 116 224 115 1.93
2018/19 111 150 102 1.35
2019/20 141 91 90 0.65
2020/21 117 72 66 0.62
2021/22 117 97 71 0.83
2022/23 143 122 121 0.85
2023/24 142 131 129 0.92
2024/25 141 171 137 1.21
2025/26 144 135 129 0.94
2026/27 145 188 142 1.3

Places offered

145

in 2026/27

Named first choice

188

523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.5%

142 of 188

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 145 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

663

110.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

63

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

150

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 Ingleby Manor Free 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 Ingleby Manor Free School 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ingleby Manor Free School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 750 places 84 on roll 2015/16 750 places 203 on roll 2016/17 750 places 347 on roll 2017/18 750 places 459 on roll 2018/19 750 places 578 on roll 2020/21 750 places 624 on roll 2021/22 750 places 619 on roll 2022/23 750 places 629 on roll 2023/24 750 places 652 on roll 2024/25 750 places 663 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stockton-on-Tees

Postcode TS17 0FA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140949).

Other contested secondary schools in Stockton-on-Tees

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.