School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ark St Alban's Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Ark St Alban's Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 119 and 156 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

156 first preferences for 119 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ark St Alban's Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ark St Alban's 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

Ark St Alban's Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 Ark St Alban's 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 1.13 per place 134 first choices 119 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 139 first choices 117 places 2017/18 1.66 per place 197 first choices 119 places 2018/19 1.57 per place 185 first choices 118 places 2019/20 1.17 per place 175 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 204 first choices 162 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 176 first choices 120 places 2022/23 1.82 per place 217 first choices 119 places 2023/24 1.48 per place 177 first choices 120 places 2024/25 1.49 per place 177 first choices 119 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 175 first choices 135 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 156 first choices 119 places
First preferences per place at Ark St Alban's Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 156 first preferences for 119 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ark St Alban's Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 119 134 105 1.13
2016/17 117 139 96 1.19
2017/18 119 197 106 1.66
2018/19 118 185 107 1.57
2019/20 150 175 132 1.17
2020/21 162 204 143 1.26
2021/22 120 176 108 1.47
2022/23 119 217 115 1.82
2023/24 120 177 109 1.48
2024/25 119 177 110 1.49
2025/26 135 175 127 1.3
2026/27 119 156 113 1.31

Places offered

119

in 2026/27

Named first choice

156

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.4%

113 of 156

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 119 offers

How close you had to live

Ark St Alban's Academy filled its places in 2025, and 564m — 0.35 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the distance criterion.

Last place offered at

0.35 mi

564 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

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 changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Birmingham Council, allocation statistics for 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

684

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

690

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Ark St Alban's 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 Ark St Alban's 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ark St Alban's Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 800 places 429 on roll 2010/11 800 places 431 on roll 2011/12 800 places 443 on roll 2012/13 800 places 437 on roll 2013/14 800 places 505 on roll 2014/15 800 places 581 on roll 2015/16 800 places 625 on roll 2016/17 800 places 669 on roll 2017/18 800 places 722 on roll 2018/19 800 places 781 on roll 2020/21 884 places 917 on roll 2021/22 884 places 919 on roll 2022/23 884 places 899 on roll 2023/24 884 places 873 on roll 2024/25 884 places 833 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B12 0YH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135970).

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.