School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Parker E-ACT Academy?

In 2026/27, The Parker E-ACT Academy offered 186 places and 172 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.92

first choices for every place available

172 first preferences for 186 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Parker E-ACT Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Parker E-ACT 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 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 Parker E-ACT Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 The Parker E-ACT 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 0.7 per place 137 first choices 195 places 2016/17 0.51 per place 77 first choices 151 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 135 first choices 186 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 150 first choices 193 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 157 first choices 195 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 190 first choices 209 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 174 first choices 193 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 199 first choices 197 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 239 first choices 198 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 233 first choices 231 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 194 first choices 196 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 172 first choices 186 places
First preferences per place at The Parker E-ACT Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 172 first preferences for 186 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Parker E-ACT Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 195 137 137 0.7
2016/17 151 77 77 0.51
2017/18 186 135 135 0.73
2018/19 193 150 150 0.78
2019/20 195 157 157 0.81
2020/21 209 190 190 0.91
2021/22 193 174 172 0.9
2022/23 197 199 193 1.01
2023/24 198 239 189 1.21
2024/25 231 233 219 1.01
2025/26 196 194 184 0.99
2026/27 186 172 172 0.92

Places offered

186

in 2026/27

Named first choice

172

226 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

172 of 172

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 178 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

1,071

102% of capacity

Over its capacity by

21

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

160

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 Parker E-ACT 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 The Parker E-ACT 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Parker E-ACT Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,210 places 872 on roll 2013/14 1,210 places 794 on roll 2014/15 1,210 places 686 on roll 2015/16 1,210 places 683 on roll 2016/17 1,210 places 711 on roll 2017/18 1,210 places 853 on roll 2018/19 1,210 places 911 on roll 2020/21 1,210 places 1,026 on roll 2021/22 1,210 places 1,108 on roll 2022/23 1,210 places 1,149 on roll 2023/24 1,210 places 1,177 on roll 2024/25 1,210 places 1,169 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
West Northamptonshire

Postcode NN11 0QE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138235).

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.