School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 174 families who named Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 320 put it first.

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

1.79

first choices for every place available

320 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Sutton Coldfield Grammar 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

Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls 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 Sutton Coldfield Grammar 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 0.6 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 2.28 per place 410 first choices 180 places 2016/17 2.2 per place 391 first choices 178 places 2017/18 2.01 per place 356 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.96 per place 343 first choices 175 places 2019/20 2.34 per place 374 first choices 160 places 2020/21 1.45 per place 261 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.37 per place 243 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.58 per place 285 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.63 per place 291 first choices 178 places 2024/25 2.01 per place 362 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.87 per place 333 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.79 per place 320 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 320 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sutton Coldfield Grammar 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
2015/16 180 410 141 2.28
2016/17 178 391 122 2.2
2017/18 177 356 141 2.01
2018/19 175 343 121 1.96
2019/20 160 374 115 2.34
2020/21 180 261 152 1.45
2021/22 177 243 158 1.37
2022/23 180 285 159 1.58
2023/24 178 291 150 1.63
2024/25 180 362 166 2.01
2025/26 178 333 144 1.87
2026/27 179 320 146 1.79

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

320

1,094 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

45.6%

146 of 320

Offers to families outside the council

35%

63 of 179 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

899

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 Sutton Coldfield Grammar 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 Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 831 places 991 on roll 2012/13 831 places 987 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 976 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 1,003 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 1,013 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 1,050 on roll 2017/18 1,096 places 1,105 on roll 2018/19 1,096 places 1,163 on roll 2020/21 1,096 places 1,185 on roll 2021/22 1,220 places 1,225 on roll 2022/23 1,220 places 1,219 on roll 2023/24 1,220 places 1,205 on roll 2024/25 1,220 places 1,215 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B73 5PT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136778).

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.