School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Arena Academy?

In 2026/27, Arena Academy offered 164 places and 123 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Birmingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

0.75

first choices for every place available

123 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Arena Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Arena 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 Birmingham 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 Birmingham, 10.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 245 of 2,271 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 Birmingham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Birmingham 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

Arena Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 9 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 3 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 Arena Academy, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 1.01 per place 181 first choices 179 places 2019/20 0.74 per place 166 first choices 223 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 181 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 181 first choices 209 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 162 first choices 210 places 2023/24 0.73 per place 131 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 143 first choices 178 places 2025/26 0.7 per place 119 first choices 170 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 123 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Arena Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 123 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Arena Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 179 181 152 1.01
2019/20 223 166 147 0.74
2020/21 238 181 168 0.76
2021/22 209 181 161 0.87
2022/23 210 162 154 0.77
2023/24 180 131 131 0.73
2024/25 178 143 127 0.8
2025/26 170 119 119 0.7
2026/27 164 123 123 0.75

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

123

479 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

123 of 123

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 158 offers

How close you had to live

Every applicant was offered a place at Arena Academy in 2025. That is the most recent round Birmingham has published, and it means there was no cut-off that year — nobody was turned away for living too far, so no distance exists to be measured against. The school did fill in 2024, when the last place went 3.03 miles out. That is the older round, not the current picture.

Last place offered at

No cut-off

everyone who applied was offered, 2025

Range across years with a cut-off

1.53–3.03 mi

2 years, 2023 to 2024

The last place offered at Arena Academy, by admission year. Each year is a separate round with its own applicants, not a trend.
Year Distance Criterion the last place went under
2025 None Everyone who applied was offered a place
2024 3.03 miles (4,869m) Distance
2023 1.53 miles (2,464m) Distance

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 moves a great deal. Across the years published here it has ranged from 1.53 to 3.03 miles — a 2.0-fold spread — because it is set by who happened to apply that year, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

And the 2024 distance above is not this school's current picture: in 2025, the most recent round published, it turned nobody away.

Birmingham Council, allocation statistics for 2023–2025. 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,041

99.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

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 Arena 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 Arena Academy reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.1% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Arena Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 900 places 902 on roll 2018/19 900 places 902 on roll 2020/21 960 places 1,021 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2022/23 1,110 places 1,108 on roll 2023/24 1,110 places 1,102 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,041 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
Birmingham

Postcode B42 2PY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145580).

Other contested secondary schools in Birmingham

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.