School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Old Swinford Hospital?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named Old Swinford Hospital as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 167 and 230 put it first.

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

1.38

first choices for every place available

230 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Old Swinford Hospital

There is no published appeal success rate for Old Swinford Hospital, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Dudley 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 Dudley, 11.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 46 of 385 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 Dudley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Dudley 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

Old Swinford Hospital 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 Old Swinford Hospital, 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 1.24 per place 51 first choices 41 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 47 first choices 46 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 82 first choices 74 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 87 first choices 80 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 110 first choices 86 places 2020/21 1.54 per place 103 first choices 67 places 2021/22 1.29 per place 174 first choices 135 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 204 first choices 142 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 187 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.45 per place 240 first choices 165 places 2025/26 1.4 per place 219 first choices 156 places 2026/27 1.38 per place 230 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at Old Swinford Hospital. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 230 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Old Swinford Hospital, 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 41 51 36 1.24
2016/17 46 47 38 1.02
2017/18 74 82 62 1.11
2018/19 80 87 70 1.09
2019/20 86 110 73 1.28
2020/21 67 103 59 1.54
2021/22 135 174 126 1.29
2022/23 142 204 136 1.44
2023/24 149 187 141 1.26
2024/25 165 240 154 1.45
2025/26 156 219 133 1.4
2026/27 167 230 153 1.38

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

230

400 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.5%

153 of 230

Offers to families outside the council

50%

84 of 167 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

598

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

716

119.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

118

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Old Swinford Hospital 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 Old Swinford Hospital 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Old Swinford Hospital from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 652 places 633 on roll 2010/11 652 places 654 on roll 2011/12 998 places 649 on roll 2012/13 998 places 638 on roll 2013/14 998 places 626 on roll 2014/15 998 places 623 on roll 2015/16 958 places 604 on roll 2016/17 958 places 598 on roll 2017/18 958 places 583 on roll 2018/19 958 places 612 on roll 2020/21 958 places 607 on roll 2021/22 958 places 689 on roll 2022/23 958 places 746 on roll 2023/24 958 places 832 on roll 2024/25 958 places 943 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Dudley

Postcode DY8 1QX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103870).

Other contested secondary schools in Dudley

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.