School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 174 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

174 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI King's Norton 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 King's Norton School for Boys turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 King's Norton 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 0.5 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 0.68 per place 81 first choices 120 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 111 first choices 128 places 2017/18 0.63 per place 81 first choices 128 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 149 first choices 148 places 2019/20 0.83 per place 123 first choices 149 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 154 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 136 first choices 160 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 166 first choices 160 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 176 first choices 165 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 149 first choices 164 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 168 first choices 162 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 174 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 174 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI King's Norton 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
2015/16 120 81 77 0.68
2016/17 128 111 94 0.87
2017/18 128 81 79 0.63
2018/19 148 149 119 1.01
2019/20 149 123 114 0.83
2020/21 178 154 143 0.87
2021/22 160 136 127 0.85
2022/23 160 166 144 1.04
2023/24 165 176 139 1.07
2024/25 164 149 134 0.91
2025/26 162 168 136 1.04
2026/27 160 174 140 1.09

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

174

652 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.5%

140 of 174

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 160 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 103562.

How close you had to live

King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys filled its places in 2025, and 2,005m — 1.25 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

1.25 mi

2,005 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

1.25–1.64 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys, 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 1.25 miles (2,005m) Distance
2024 1.64 miles (2,640m) Distance
2023 1.32 miles (2,130m) 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

851

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

818

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

33

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 King's Norton 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 King's Norton School for Boys reported 33 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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 King Edward VI King's Norton School for Boys 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 2009/10 707 places 739 on roll 2010/11 707 places 739 on roll 2011/12 707 places 727 on roll 2012/13 707 places 712 on roll 2013/14 707 places 727 on roll 2014/15 707 places 692 on roll 2015/16 707 places 664 on roll 2016/17 707 places 660 on roll 2017/18 743 places 631 on roll 2018/19 743 places 628 on roll 2020/21 743 places 721 on roll 2021/22 743 places 750 on roll 2022/23 743 places 790 on roll 2023/24 743 places 812 on roll 2024/25 851 places 818 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 1DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150320).

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.