School Admission Appeals

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

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 177 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

177 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI Northfield 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 Northfield School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at King Edward VI Northfield 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 0.67 per place 70 first choices 105 places 2016/17 0.61 per place 65 first choices 107 places 2017/18 0.68 per place 97 first choices 143 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 99 first choices 129 places 2019/20 0.73 per place 110 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 107 first choices 133 places 2021/22 0.7 per place 92 first choices 131 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 155 first choices 149 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 195 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 193 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 184 first choices 148 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 177 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI Northfield 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
2015/16 105 70 70 0.67
2016/17 107 65 65 0.61
2017/18 143 97 97 0.68
2018/19 129 99 99 0.77
2019/20 150 110 108 0.73
2020/21 133 107 101 0.8
2021/22 131 92 92 0.7
2022/23 149 155 130 1.04
2023/24 149 195 139 1.31
2024/25 150 193 136 1.29
2025/26 148 184 135 1.24
2026/27 150 177 139 1.18

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

480 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.5%

139 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 150 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 103499.

How close you had to live

King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls filled its places in 2025, and 1,693m — 1.05 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

1.05 mi

1,693 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

0.91–1.05 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at King Edward VI Northfield 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 1.05 miles (1,693m) Distance
2024 0.99 miles (1,586m) Distance
2023 0.91 miles (1,465m) 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

763

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

737

96.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

26

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 Northfield 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 Northfield School for Girls reported 26 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.6% 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 Northfield School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 722 on roll 2010/11 750 places 727 on roll 2011/12 750 places 699 on roll 2012/13 750 places 664 on roll 2013/14 750 places 630 on roll 2014/15 750 places 585 on roll 2015/16 750 places 560 on roll 2016/17 750 places 550 on roll 2017/18 750 places 583 on roll 2018/19 750 places 606 on roll 2020/21 750 places 690 on roll 2021/22 750 places 740 on roll 2022/23 750 places 751 on roll 2023/24 750 places 746 on roll 2024/25 763 places 737 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 B31 4BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148684).

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.