School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 175 and 176 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

176 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, 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 Wood Girls' Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 7 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 Wood Girls' Academy, 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 0.78 per place 117 first choices 150 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 146 first choices 160 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 146 first choices 160 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 141 first choices 159 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 175 first choices 160 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 168 first choices 159 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 143 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 135 first choices 174 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 149 first choices 175 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 156 first choices 174 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 148 first choices 176 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 176 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 176 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 117 97 0.78
2016/17 160 146 110 0.91
2017/18 160 146 106 0.91
2018/19 159 141 104 0.89
2019/20 160 175 105 1.09
2020/21 159 168 117 1.06
2021/22 175 143 128 0.82
2022/23 174 135 127 0.78
2023/24 175 149 127 0.85
2024/25 174 156 131 0.9
2025/26 176 148 134 0.84
2026/27 175 176 136 1.01

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

176

571 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.3%

136 of 176

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 175 offers

How close you had to live

King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy filled its places in 2025, and 3,085m — 1.92 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

1.92 mi

3,085 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

1.54–1.92 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, 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 1.92 miles (3,085m) Distance
2024 1.59 miles (2,554m) Distance
2023 1.54 miles (2,473m) 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

817

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

854

104.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

37

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

180

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 Wood Girls' Academy 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 Wood Girls' Academy 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 817 places 792 on roll 2013/14 817 places 808 on roll 2014/15 817 places 819 on roll 2015/16 817 places 849 on roll 2016/17 817 places 854 on roll 2017/18 817 places 853 on roll 2018/19 917 places 913 on roll 2020/21 1,007 places 972 on roll 2021/22 1,007 places 1,002 on roll 2022/23 997 places 1,010 on roll 2023/24 997 places 1,053 on roll 2024/25 997 places 1,059 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 B20 2HL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138937).

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.