School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Droylsden Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Droylsden Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 181 and 199 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 181 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Droylsden Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Droylsden 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 Tameside 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 Tameside, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 82 of 635 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 Tameside.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Tameside 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

Droylsden Academy turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 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 Droylsden 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 0.82 per place 101 first choices 123 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 102 first choices 131 places 2017/18 0.59 per place 98 first choices 167 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 170 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 187 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 220 first choices 179 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 217 first choices 190 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 191 first choices 177 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 260 first choices 190 places 2024/25 1.6 per place 266 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 193 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 199 first choices 181 places
First preferences per place at Droylsden Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 181 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Droylsden Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 123 101 101 0.82
2016/17 131 102 101 0.78
2017/18 167 98 98 0.59
2018/19 180 170 152 0.94
2019/20 175 187 151 1.07
2020/21 179 220 158 1.23
2021/22 190 217 156 1.14
2022/23 177 191 159 1.08
2023/24 190 260 179 1.37
2024/25 166 266 155 1.6
2025/26 172 193 145 1.12
2026/27 181 199 168 1.1

Places offered

181

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

490 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

168 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

24%

43 of 181 offers

How close you had to live

Droylsden Academy filled its places in 2026, and 977m — 0.61 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.61 mi

977 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

as numbered by the school

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Tameside Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,121

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

925

82.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

196

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 Droylsden 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 Droylsden Academy reported 196 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.5% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Droylsden Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 1,147 on roll 2010/11 1,400 places 1,109 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,068 on roll 2012/13 1,400 places 1,041 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 984 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 885 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 848 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 883 on roll 2017/18 900 places 877 on roll 2018/19 900 places 892 on roll 2020/21 900 places 910 on roll 2021/22 900 places 930 on roll 2022/23 900 places 923 on roll 2023/24 900 places 934 on roll 2024/25 1,121 places 925 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
Tameside

Postcode M43 6QD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135864).

Other contested secondary schools in Tameside

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.