School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Plantsbrook School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 47 families who named Plantsbrook School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 270 and 273 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

273 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Plantsbrook School

There is no published appeal success rate for Plantsbrook 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

Plantsbrook School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 of those years. In the other 1 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 Plantsbrook School, 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 1.14 per place 240 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1.38 per place 308 first choices 224 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 266 first choices 240 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 223 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 275 first choices 252 places 2020/21 1.38 per place 329 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 318 first choices 243 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 336 first choices 254 places 2023/24 1.7 per place 400 first choices 235 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 306 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 259 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 273 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at Plantsbrook School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 273 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Plantsbrook School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 240 148 1.14
2016/17 224 308 179 1.38
2017/18 240 266 190 1.11
2018/19 235 223 182 0.95
2019/20 252 275 191 1.09
2020/21 239 329 204 1.38
2021/22 243 318 214 1.31
2022/23 254 336 228 1.32
2023/24 235 400 214 1.7
2024/25 238 306 207 1.29
2025/26 237 259 196 1.09
2026/27 270 273 226 1.01

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

273

1,672 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.8%

226 of 273

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 270 offers

How close you had to live

Plantsbrook School filled its places in 2025, and 2,217m — 1.38 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

1.38 mi

2,217 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

0.79–1.38 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at Plantsbrook School, 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 1.38 miles (2,217m) Distance
2024 1.07 miles (1,723m) Distance
2023 0.79 miles (1,275m) 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 moves a great deal. Across the years published here it has ranged from 0.79 to 1.38 miles — a 1.7-fold spread — because it is set by who happened to apply that year, 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

1,260

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,242

98.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

336

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 Plantsbrook 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 Plantsbrook School reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Plantsbrook School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,218 places 1,266 on roll 2012/13 1,218 places 1,328 on roll 2013/14 1,218 places 1,289 on roll 2014/15 1,218 places 1,304 on roll 2015/16 1,218 places 1,285 on roll 2016/17 1,420 places 1,274 on roll 2017/18 1,560 places 1,316 on roll 2018/19 1,560 places 1,379 on roll 2020/21 1,475 places 1,488 on roll 2021/22 1,540 places 1,505 on roll 2022/23 1,540 places 1,514 on roll 2023/24 1,540 places 1,547 on roll 2024/25 1,596 places 1,564 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 B72 1RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137053).

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.