School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Duston School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 75 families who named The Duston School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 262 and 313 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

313 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Duston School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Duston 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 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

The Duston School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 2 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 The Duston 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 1.06 per place 245 first choices 231 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 283 first choices 237 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 291 first choices 238 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 227 first choices 238 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 237 first choices 262 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 240 first choices 266 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 285 first choices 264 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 292 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 308 first choices 266 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 262 first choices 272 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 293 first choices 268 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 313 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at The Duston School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 313 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Duston School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 231 245 208 1.06
2016/17 237 283 211 1.19
2017/18 238 291 215 1.22
2018/19 238 227 198 0.95
2019/20 262 237 224 0.9
2020/21 266 240 221 0.9
2021/22 264 285 242 1.08
2022/23 264 292 235 1.11
2023/24 266 308 235 1.16
2024/25 272 262 232 0.96
2025/26 268 293 240 1.09
2026/27 262 313 238 1.19

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

313

562 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76%

238 of 313

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 262 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

1,620

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,801

111.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

181

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

210

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 Duston 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 Duston 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Duston School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,400 places 1,341 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,357 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,389 on roll 2015/16 1,830 places 1,462 on roll 2016/17 1,830 places 1,521 on roll 2017/18 1,830 places 1,587 on roll 2018/19 1,830 places 1,636 on roll 2020/21 1,890 places 1,845 on roll 2021/22 1,890 places 1,900 on roll 2022/23 1,890 places 1,955 on roll 2023/24 1,890 places 1,982 on roll 2024/25 1,830 places 2,022 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 NN5 6XA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138214).

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.