School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 156 families who named Bishop Vesey's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 190 and 306 put it first.

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

1.61

first choices for every place available

306 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Vesey's Grammar 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 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

Bishop Vesey's Grammar School 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 Bishop Vesey's Grammar 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 1.83 per place 289 first choices 158 places 2016/17 1.91 per place 306 first choices 160 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 234 first choices 159 places 2018/19 1.47 per place 228 first choices 155 places 2019/20 1.72 per place 263 first choices 153 places 2020/21 1.44 per place 267 first choices 186 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 233 first choices 187 places 2022/23 1.54 per place 292 first choices 190 places 2023/24 1.56 per place 293 first choices 188 places 2024/25 1.8 per place 340 first choices 189 places 2025/26 1.81 per place 338 first choices 187 places 2026/27 1.61 per place 306 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 306 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 289 117 1.83
2016/17 160 306 126 1.91
2017/18 159 234 110 1.47
2018/19 155 228 106 1.47
2019/20 153 263 97 1.72
2020/21 186 267 141 1.44
2021/22 187 233 134 1.25
2022/23 190 292 160 1.54
2023/24 188 293 138 1.56
2024/25 189 340 149 1.8
2025/26 187 338 133 1.81
2026/27 190 306 150 1.61

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

306

1,059 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49%

150 of 306

Offers to families outside the council

34%

65 of 190 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

1,056

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

955

90.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

101

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

420

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 Bishop Vesey's Grammar 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 Bishop Vesey's Grammar School reported 101 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.4% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,020 places 957 on roll 2012/13 1,020 places 959 on roll 2013/14 1,020 places 983 on roll 2014/15 1,020 places 987 on roll 2015/16 1,020 places 1,022 on roll 2016/17 1,020 places 1,069 on roll 2017/18 1,132 places 1,118 on roll 2018/19 1,132 places 1,160 on roll 2020/21 1,264 places 1,295 on roll 2021/22 1,360 places 1,307 on roll 2022/23 1,476 places 1,345 on roll 2023/24 1,476 places 1,377 on roll 2024/25 1,476 places 1,411 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bishop Vesey's Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2020 No fault found ADA3665
4 July 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3543

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B74 2NH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137988).

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.