School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 117 put it first and 102 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.

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

117 first preferences for 165 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls, 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 Lordswood School for Girls turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 3 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 Lordswood School for Girls, 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 1.02 per place 132 first choices 130 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 114 first choices 132 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 141 first choices 156 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 159 first choices 153 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 182 first choices 138 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 210 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 199 first choices 155 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 167 first choices 154 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 173 first choices 152 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 158 first choices 154 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 169 first choices 153 places 2026/27 0.71 per place 117 first choices 165 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 117 first preferences for 165 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 130 132 91 1.02
2016/17 132 114 73 0.86
2017/18 156 141 103 0.9
2018/19 153 159 112 1.04
2019/20 138 182 95 1.32
2020/21 156 210 123 1.35
2021/22 155 199 122 1.28
2022/23 154 167 122 1.08
2023/24 152 173 125 1.14
2024/25 154 158 113 1.03
2025/26 153 169 128 1.1
2026/27 165 117 102 0.71

Places offered

165

in 2026/27

Named first choice

117

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.2%

102 of 117

Offers to families outside the council

29%

48 of 165 offers

How close you had to live

King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls filled its places in 2025, and 2,015m — 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

2,015 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

1.16–1.27 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls, 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 (2,015m) Distance
2024 1.16 miles (1,872m) Distance
2023 1.27 miles (2,042m) 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

756

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

764

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

220

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 Lordswood School for Girls 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 Lordswood School for Girls 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 648 places 841 on roll 2011/12 880 places 815 on roll 2012/13 880 places 814 on roll 2013/14 880 places 912 on roll 2014/15 880 places 955 on roll 2015/16 880 places 918 on roll 2016/17 880 places 935 on roll 2017/18 880 places 952 on roll 2018/19 880 places 926 on roll 2020/21 960 places 976 on roll 2021/22 990 places 986 on roll 2022/23 976 places 987 on roll 2023/24 976 places 949 on roll 2024/25 976 places 968 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 B17 8QB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136592).

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.