School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 88 families who named King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 152 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

152 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, 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

King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 6 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 King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.66 per place 248 first choices 149 places 2016/17 1.48 per place 221 first choices 149 places 2017/18 1.3 per place 188 first choices 145 places 2018/19 1.43 per place 204 first choices 143 places 2019/20 2.25 per place 263 first choices 117 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 119 first choices 147 places 2021/22 0.64 per place 98 first choices 152 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 123 first choices 147 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 122 first choices 147 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 128 first choices 146 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 142 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 152 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 152 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 149 248 18 1.66
2016/17 149 221 44 1.48
2017/18 145 188 30 1.3
2018/19 143 204 38 1.43
2019/20 117 263 26 2.25
2020/21 147 119 64 0.81
2021/22 152 98 56 0.64
2022/23 147 123 64 0.84
2023/24 147 122 54 0.83
2024/25 146 128 56 0.88
2025/26 150 142 51 0.95
2026/27 146 152 64 1.04

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

152

1,096 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.1%

64 of 152

Offers to families outside the council

41%

60 of 146 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 103549.

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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

750

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys 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 King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys 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 King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 810 places 930 on roll 2010/11 810 places 933 on roll 2011/12 810 places 933 on roll 2012/13 898 places 971 on roll 2013/14 898 places 966 on roll 2014/15 898 places 969 on roll 2015/16 898 places 983 on roll 2016/17 898 places 983 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 1,016 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 1,033 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,053 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,039 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,063 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,046 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,043 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. King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2020 No fault found ADA3666

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 B21 9ET. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143562).

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.