School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wootton Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 203 families who named Wootton Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 112 and 301 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in West Northamptonshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

2.69

first choices for every place available

301 first preferences for 112 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wootton Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wootton Park 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

Wootton Park School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 10 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Wootton Park School, 2017/18 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 1.42 per place 165 first choices 116 places 2018/19 2.05 per place 234 first choices 114 places 2019/20 2.13 per place 245 first choices 115 places 2020/21 2.79 per place 324 first choices 116 places 2021/22 1.59 per place 273 first choices 172 places 2022/23 2.15 per place 372 first choices 173 places 2023/24 3.3 per place 347 first choices 105 places 2024/25 3.13 per place 351 first choices 112 places 2025/26 2.83 per place 308 first choices 109 places 2026/27 2.69 per place 301 first choices 112 places
First preferences per place at Wootton Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 301 first preferences for 112 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wootton Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 116 165 106 1.42
2018/19 114 234 99 2.05
2019/20 115 245 96 2.13
2020/21 116 324 98 2.79
2021/22 172 273 145 1.59
2022/23 173 372 158 2.15
2023/24 105 347 95 3.3
2024/25 112 351 98 3.13
2025/26 109 308 101 2.83
2026/27 112 301 98 2.69

Places offered

112

in 2026/27

Named first choice

301

996 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

32.6%

98 of 301

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 112 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

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,319

129.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

299

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Wootton Park 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 Wootton Park 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wootton Park School from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,020 places 167 on roll 2017/18 1,260 places 349 on roll 2018/19 1,260 places 541 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 907 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,123 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,361 on roll 2023/24 1,380 places 1,449 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,559 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
West Northamptonshire

Postcode NN4 0HZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142869).

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.