School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Moulton School and Science College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named Moulton School and Science College as their first choice did not get a place: 162 put it first and 157 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

162 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Moulton School and Science College

There is no published appeal success rate for Moulton School and Science College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for West Northamptonshire 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 West Northamptonshire, 11.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 112 of 995 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 West Northamptonshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not West Northamptonshire 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

Moulton School and Science College turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Moulton School and Science College, 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 0.68 per place 149 first choices 220 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 207 first choices 234 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 176 first choices 240 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 209 first choices 236 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 191 first choices 235 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 190 first choices 235 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 186 first choices 236 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 185 first choices 239 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 196 first choices 258 places 2024/25 0.64 per place 136 first choices 214 places 2025/26 0.76 per place 178 first choices 233 places 2026/27 0.65 per place 162 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Moulton School and Science College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 162 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Moulton School and Science College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 220 149 149 0.68
2016/17 234 207 187 0.88
2017/18 240 176 166 0.73
2018/19 236 209 183 0.89
2019/20 235 191 175 0.81
2020/21 235 190 176 0.81
2021/22 236 186 173 0.79
2022/23 239 185 184 0.77
2023/24 258 196 180 0.76
2024/25 214 136 136 0.64
2025/26 233 178 156 0.76
2026/27 250 162 157 0.65

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

162

608 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.9%

157 of 162

Offers to families outside the council

2%

6 of 250 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

1,173

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,239

105.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

66

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Moulton School and Science College 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 Moulton School and Science College 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Moulton School and Science College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,393 places 1,335 on roll 2012/13 1,393 places 1,345 on roll 2013/14 1,393 places 1,341 on roll 2014/15 1,393 places 1,339 on roll 2015/16 1,393 places 1,355 on roll 2016/17 1,393 places 1,372 on roll 2017/18 1,393 places 1,363 on roll 2018/19 1,393 places 1,327 on roll 2020/21 1,393 places 1,323 on roll 2021/22 1,393 places 1,352 on roll 2022/23 1,393 places 1,383 on roll 2023/24 1,423 places 1,421 on roll 2024/25 1,423 places 1,433 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
West Northamptonshire

Postcode NN3 7SD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137614).

Other contested secondary schools in West Northamptonshire

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.