School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI Handsworth School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 115 families who named King Edward VI Handsworth School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 207 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

207 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Handsworth School

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI Handsworth 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

King Edward VI Handsworth School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 2 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 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 1.78 per place 282 first choices 158 places 2016/17 1.92 per place 306 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.45 per place 234 first choices 161 places 2018/19 1.69 per place 263 first choices 156 places 2019/20 1.64 per place 231 first choices 141 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 208 first choices 189 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 197 first choices 193 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 178 first choices 189 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 200 first choices 191 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 238 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 163 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 207 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Handsworth School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 207 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI Handsworth School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 282 99 1.78
2016/17 159 306 102 1.92
2017/18 161 234 94 1.45
2018/19 156 263 89 1.69
2019/20 141 231 70 1.64
2020/21 189 208 134 1.1
2021/22 193 197 121 1.02
2022/23 189 178 94 0.94
2023/24 191 200 103 1.05
2024/25 191 238 112 1.25
2025/26 192 163 79 0.85
2026/27 192 207 92 1.08

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

207

1,145 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

44.4%

92 of 207

Offers to families outside the council

28%

53 of 192 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

896

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

959

107% of capacity

Over its capacity by

63

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 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 King Edward VI Handsworth 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King Edward VI Handsworth School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 896 places 904 on roll 2012/13 896 places 898 on roll 2013/14 896 places 902 on roll 2014/15 896 places 928 on roll 2015/16 896 places 965 on roll 2016/17 1,024 places 1,015 on roll 2017/18 1,024 places 1,049 on roll 2018/19 1,024 places 1,087 on roll 2020/21 1,180 places 1,177 on roll 2021/22 1,214 places 1,222 on roll 2022/23 1,246 places 1,272 on roll 2023/24 1,246 places 1,285 on roll 2024/25 1,246 places 1,325 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 School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming King Edward VI Handsworth School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 June 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2614

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 9AR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137047).

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.