School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Redhill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Redhill School as their first choice did not get a place: 229 put it first and 222 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

229 first preferences for 245 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Redhill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Redhill 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 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

Redhill School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 Redhill 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 1.15 per place 278 first choices 242 places 2016/17 1.3 per place 318 first choices 245 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 294 first choices 243 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 301 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 315 first choices 243 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 265 first choices 242 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 273 first choices 239 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 226 first choices 237 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 259 first choices 241 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 257 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1 per place 235 first choices 236 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 229 first choices 245 places
First preferences per place at Redhill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 229 first preferences for 245 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Redhill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 242 278 228 1.15
2016/17 245 318 237 1.3
2017/18 243 294 233 1.21
2018/19 238 301 231 1.26
2019/20 243 315 225 1.3
2020/21 242 265 221 1.1
2021/22 239 273 224 1.14
2022/23 237 226 211 0.95
2023/24 241 259 227 1.07
2024/25 239 257 222 1.08
2025/26 236 235 194 1
2026/27 245 229 222 0.93

Places offered

245

in 2026/27

Named first choice

229

599 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.9%

222 of 229

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 245 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

1,231

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,208

98.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

23

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Redhill 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 Redhill School reported 23 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.1% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Redhill School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,175 places 1,181 on roll 2014/15 1,175 places 1,188 on roll 2015/16 1,175 places 1,193 on roll 2016/17 1,175 places 1,201 on roll 2017/18 1,175 places 1,207 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,214 on roll 2020/21 1,175 places 1,228 on roll 2021/22 1,175 places 1,224 on roll 2022/23 1,175 places 1,223 on roll 2023/24 1,175 places 1,204 on roll 2024/25 1,231 places 1,208 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
Dudley

Postcode DY8 1JX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139872).

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.