School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Summerhill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 94 families who named Summerhill School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 199 and 291 put it first.

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

1.46

first choices for every place available

291 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Summerhill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Summerhill 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

Summerhill School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Summerhill 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 1.34 per place 260 first choices 194 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 220 first choices 200 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 200 first choices 209 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 198 first choices 206 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 166 first choices 183 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 186 first choices 199 places 2021/22 1.1 per place 224 first choices 203 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 212 first choices 198 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 258 first choices 205 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 264 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.49 per place 304 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.46 per place 291 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Summerhill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 291 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Summerhill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 194 260 188 1.34
2016/17 200 220 195 1.1
2017/18 209 200 196 0.96
2018/19 206 198 198 0.96
2019/20 183 166 166 0.91
2020/21 199 186 186 0.93
2021/22 203 224 201 1.1
2022/23 198 212 196 1.07
2023/24 205 258 197 1.26
2024/25 234 264 230 1.13
2025/26 204 304 200 1.49
2026/27 199 291 197 1.46

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

291

594 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.7%

197 of 291

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 199 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

1,058

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,092

103.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

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 Summerhill 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 Summerhill School 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 Summerhill School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,059 places 1,007 on roll 2010/11 1,059 places 1,005 on roll 2011/12 1,055 places 1,011 on roll 2012/13 1,055 places 1,012 on roll 2013/14 1,055 places 1,013 on roll 2014/15 1,055 places 1,021 on roll 2015/16 1,055 places 1,020 on roll 2016/17 1,055 places 1,006 on roll 2017/18 1,055 places 1,006 on roll 2018/19 1,055 places 1,013 on roll 2020/21 1,055 places 1,034 on roll 2021/22 1,055 places 1,039 on roll 2022/23 1,055 places 1,047 on roll 2023/24 1,055 places 1,052 on roll 2024/25 1,058 places 1,092 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Dudley

Postcode DY6 9XE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103854).

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.