School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School as their first choice did not get a place: 115 put it first and 83 of them were offered one.

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

32

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

115 first preferences for 130 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dame Elizabeth Cadbury 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

Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 5 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 Dame Elizabeth Cadbury 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 0.96 per place 119 first choices 124 places 2016/17 0.64 per place 80 first choices 125 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 140 first choices 125 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 169 first choices 147 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 156 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.74 per place 226 first choices 130 places 2021/22 1.75 per place 227 first choices 130 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 127 first choices 146 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 124 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1 per place 150 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 167 first choices 126 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 115 first choices 130 places
First preferences per place at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 115 first preferences for 130 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 124 119 95 0.96
2016/17 125 80 74 0.64
2017/18 125 140 87 1.12
2018/19 147 169 108 1.15
2019/20 150 156 114 1.04
2020/21 130 226 118 1.74
2021/22 130 227 115 1.75
2022/23 146 127 95 0.87
2023/24 150 124 101 0.83
2024/25 150 150 100 1
2025/26 126 167 101 1.33
2026/27 130 115 83 0.88

Places offered

130

in 2026/27

Named first choice

115

1,127 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.2%

83 of 115

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 130 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 103494.

How close you had to live

Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School filled its places in 2025, and 1,954m — 1.21 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

1.21 mi

1,954 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

1.21–1.37 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School, 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 1.21 miles (1,954m) Distance
2024 1.28 miles (2,056m) Distance
2023 1.37 miles (2,204m) 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 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 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

692

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

704

101.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

12

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

31

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 Dame Elizabeth Cadbury 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 Dame Elizabeth Cadbury 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 622 places 585 on roll 2010/11 622 places 604 on roll 2011/12 622 places 586 on roll 2012/13 622 places 579 on roll 2013/14 622 places 594 on roll 2014/15 622 places 610 on roll 2015/16 622 places 621 on roll 2016/17 650 places 640 on roll 2017/18 650 places 681 on roll 2018/19 650 places 705 on roll 2020/21 796 places 815 on roll 2021/22 796 places 825 on roll 2022/23 723 places 774 on roll 2023/24 723 places 765 on roll 2024/25 723 places 771 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B30 1UL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143438).

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.