School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Nishkam High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 134 families who named Nishkam High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 233 put it first.

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

1.94

first choices for every place available

233 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Nishkam High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Nishkam High 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

Nishkam High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Nishkam High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.01 per place 101 first choices 100 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 124 first choices 100 places 2017/18 1.6 per place 160 first choices 100 places 2018/19 1.73 per place 175 first choices 101 places 2019/20 2.26 per place 215 first choices 95 places 2020/21 2.06 per place 208 first choices 101 places 2021/22 1.88 per place 190 first choices 101 places 2022/23 2.16 per place 210 first choices 97 places 2023/24 1.85 per place 200 first choices 108 places 2024/25 1.92 per place 204 first choices 106 places 2025/26 1.83 per place 196 first choices 107 places 2026/27 1.94 per place 233 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Nishkam High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 233 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Nishkam High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 100 101 64 1.01
2016/17 100 124 76 1.24
2017/18 100 160 84 1.6
2018/19 101 175 76 1.73
2019/20 95 215 80 2.26
2020/21 101 208 88 2.06
2021/22 101 190 91 1.88
2022/23 97 210 79 2.16
2023/24 108 200 96 1.85
2024/25 106 204 82 1.92
2025/26 107 196 95 1.83
2026/27 120 233 99 1.94

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

233

1,119 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.5%

99 of 233

Offers to families outside the council

35%

42 of 120 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

500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

556

111.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

56

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Nishkam High 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 Nishkam High 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Nishkam High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 700 places 131 on roll 2013/14 700 places 255 on roll 2014/15 700 places 336 on roll 2015/16 700 places 425 on roll 2016/17 700 places 558 on roll 2017/18 700 places 619 on roll 2018/19 700 places 658 on roll 2020/21 700 places 666 on roll 2021/22 700 places 672 on roll 2022/23 700 places 653 on roll 2023/24 700 places 670 on roll 2024/25 700 places 668 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. Nishkam High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Nishkam High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
11 February 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2796

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B19 2LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138586).

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.