School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Waverley School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named Waverley School as their first choice did not get a place: 90 put it first and 84 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.

6

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

90 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Waverley School

There is no published appeal success rate for Waverley 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

Waverley School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 4 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 Waverley 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 1.71 per place 292 first choices 171 places 2016/17 1.62 per place 282 first choices 174 places 2017/18 1.41 per place 254 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.51 per place 273 first choices 181 places 2019/20 2.28 per place 196 first choices 86 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 160 first choices 119 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 141 first choices 120 places 2022/23 1 per place 116 first choices 116 places 2023/24 0.79 per place 95 first choices 120 places 2024/25 0.77 per place 91 first choices 118 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 97 first choices 117 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 90 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Waverley School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 90 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Waverley School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 171 292 150 1.71
2016/17 174 282 150 1.62
2017/18 180 254 142 1.41
2018/19 181 273 145 1.51
2019/20 86 196 77 2.28
2020/21 119 160 96 1.34
2021/22 120 141 104 1.18
2022/23 116 116 80 1
2023/24 120 95 74 0.79
2024/25 118 91 72 0.77
2025/26 117 97 72 0.83
2026/27 120 90 84 0.75

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

90

905 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.3%

84 of 90

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 120 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 103481.

How close you had to live

Waverley School filled its places in 2024, and 1,198m — 0.74 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

0.74 mi

1,198 metres, 2024

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

0.65–0.74 mi

2 years, 2023 to 2024

The last place offered at Waverley 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
2024 0.74 miles (1,198m) Distance
2023 0.65 miles (1,041m) 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 2023–2024. 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

1,656

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,620

97.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

36

across Years 7 to 11

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 Waverley 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 Waverley School reported 36 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.8% 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 Waverley School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 725 places 830 on roll 2010/11 725 places 857 on roll 2011/12 900 places 928 on roll 2012/13 1,730 places 997 on roll 2013/14 1,730 places 1,152 on roll 2014/15 1,730 places 1,228 on roll 2015/16 1,824 places 1,358 on roll 2016/17 1,824 places 1,471 on roll 2017/18 1,824 places 1,583 on roll 2018/19 1,824 places 1,683 on roll 2020/21 1,880 places 1,692 on roll 2021/22 1,880 places 1,696 on roll 2022/23 1,974 places 1,762 on roll 2023/24 1,974 places 1,801 on roll 2024/25 1,856 places 1,726 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 B9 5QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142219).

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.