School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holte School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Holte School as their first choice did not get a place: 165 put it first and 147 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.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

165 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holte School

There is no published appeal success rate for Holte 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

Holte School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Holte 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 1.07 per place 205 first choices 191 places 2016/17 1.23 per place 233 first choices 190 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 236 first choices 193 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 222 first choices 190 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 204 first choices 192 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 217 first choices 251 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 172 first choices 192 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 186 first choices 191 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 179 first choices 191 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 179 first choices 189 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 158 first choices 190 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 165 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at Holte School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 165 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holte School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 191 205 167 1.07
2016/17 190 233 173 1.23
2017/18 193 236 170 1.22
2018/19 190 222 160 1.17
2019/20 192 204 156 1.06
2020/21 251 217 189 0.86
2021/22 192 172 157 0.9
2022/23 191 186 156 0.97
2023/24 191 179 158 0.94
2024/25 189 179 160 0.95
2025/26 190 158 151 0.83
2026/27 192 165 147 0.86

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

165

813 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

147 of 165

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 192 offers

How close you had to live

Holte School filled its places in 2025, and 1,333m — 0.83 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

0.83 mi

1,333 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

0.58–0.83 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at Holte 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 0.83 miles (1,333m) Distance
2024 0.59 miles (951m) Distance
2023 0.58 miles (941m) 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

1,085

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

998

92% of capacity

Unfilled places

87

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

164

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 Holte 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 Holte School reported 87 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Holte School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 960 places 952 on roll 2010/11 960 places 958 on roll 2011/12 960 places 1,149 on roll 2012/13 1,175 places 1,166 on roll 2013/14 1,175 places 1,136 on roll 2014/15 1,175 places 1,102 on roll 2015/16 1,175 places 1,110 on roll 2016/17 1,175 places 1,120 on roll 2017/18 1,175 places 1,141 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,134 on roll 2020/21 1,295 places 1,223 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,193 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,193 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,172 on roll 2024/25 1,249 places 1,157 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B19 2EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103509).

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.