School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Dormston School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named The Dormston School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 219 and 223 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

223 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Dormston School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Dormston 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

The Dormston School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 The Dormston 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 0.84 per place 134 first choices 159 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 256 first choices 247 places 2017/18 1.06 per place 237 first choices 224 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 296 first choices 221 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 272 first choices 221 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 292 first choices 220 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 273 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 274 first choices 228 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 284 first choices 223 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 254 first choices 221 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 246 first choices 222 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 223 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at The Dormston School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Dormston School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 159 134 134 0.84
2016/17 247 256 224 1.04
2017/18 224 237 203 1.06
2018/19 221 296 203 1.34
2019/20 221 272 204 1.23
2020/21 220 292 215 1.33
2021/22 238 273 229 1.15
2022/23 228 274 206 1.2
2023/24 223 284 204 1.27
2024/25 221 254 208 1.15
2025/26 222 246 209 1.11
2026/27 219 223 207 1.02

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

538 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.8%

207 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

22%

48 of 219 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

1,120

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,130

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

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 The Dormston 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 The Dormston 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 The Dormston School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,120 places 1,115 on roll 2010/11 1,120 places 1,114 on roll 2011/12 1,120 places 1,113 on roll 2012/13 1,120 places 1,094 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 1,011 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 979 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 974 on roll 2016/17 1,120 places 1,076 on roll 2017/18 1,120 places 1,105 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 1,118 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,136 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,121 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,143 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,141 on roll 2024/25 1,120 places 1,130 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 DY3 1SN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103855).

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.