School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Earls High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 61 families who named The Earls High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 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.

1.23

first choices for every place available

291 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Earls High School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Earls High 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 Earls High School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Earls High 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 1.16 per place 272 first choices 235 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 270 first choices 238 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 233 first choices 247 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 329 first choices 247 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 275 first choices 245 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 253 first choices 243 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 196 first choices 246 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 254 first choices 258 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 297 first choices 272 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 328 first choices 261 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 287 first choices 265 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 291 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at The Earls High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 291 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Earls High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 235 272 223 1.16
2016/17 238 270 223 1.13
2017/18 247 233 219 0.94
2018/19 247 329 244 1.33
2019/20 245 275 228 1.12
2020/21 243 253 226 1.04
2021/22 246 196 196 0.8
2022/23 258 254 233 0.98
2023/24 272 297 257 1.09
2024/25 261 328 252 1.26
2025/26 265 287 244 1.08
2026/27 237 291 230 1.23

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

291

825 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79%

230 of 291

Offers to families outside the council

16%

39 of 237 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,287

107.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

87

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 Earls High 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 Earls High 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Earls High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,200 places 1,194 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,193 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,192 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,191 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,188 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,183 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,190 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,193 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,213 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,207 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,225 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,258 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,287 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 B63 3SL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137812).

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.