School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sidney Stringer Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 121 families who named Sidney Stringer Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 209 and 319 put it first.

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

1.53

first choices for every place available

319 first preferences for 209 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sidney Stringer Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sidney Stringer Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Coventry 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 Coventry, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 224 of 1,056 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 Coventry.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Coventry 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

Sidney Stringer Academy 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 Sidney Stringer Academy, 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 1.27 per place 266 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1.42 per place 299 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.51 per place 317 first choices 210 places 2018/19 1.67 per place 349 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1.59 per place 381 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.56 per place 326 first choices 209 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 304 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.54 per place 370 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.62 per place 387 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 363 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.66 per place 348 first choices 210 places 2026/27 1.53 per place 319 first choices 209 places
First preferences per place at Sidney Stringer Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 319 first preferences for 209 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sidney Stringer Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 266 198 1.27
2016/17 210 299 202 1.42
2017/18 210 317 200 1.51
2018/19 209 349 201 1.67
2019/20 240 381 230 1.59
2020/21 209 326 199 1.56
2021/22 210 304 190 1.45
2022/23 240 370 234 1.54
2023/24 239 387 220 1.62
2024/25 240 363 222 1.51
2025/26 210 348 204 1.66
2026/27 209 319 198 1.53

Places offered

209

in 2026/27

Named first choice

319

759 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.1%

198 of 319

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 209 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,141

108.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

91

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 Sidney Stringer Academy 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 Sidney Stringer Academy 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sidney Stringer Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,350 places 1,264 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,302 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,304 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,325 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,306 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,287 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,301 on roll 2017/18 1,319 places 1,312 on roll 2018/19 1,319 places 1,353 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,460 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,442 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,466 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,470 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,489 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Coventry

Postcode CV1 5LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136126).

Other contested secondary schools in Coventry

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.