School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Windsor High School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named Windsor High School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 291 and 294 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

294 first preferences for 291 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Windsor High School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Windsor High School and Sixth Form, 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

Windsor High School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Windsor High School and Sixth Form, 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 1.02 per place 293 first choices 287 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 294 first choices 289 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 327 first choices 295 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 244 first choices 287 places 2019/20 1 per place 281 first choices 280 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 325 first choices 286 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 345 first choices 290 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 310 first choices 286 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 340 first choices 290 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 291 first choices 287 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 284 first choices 287 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 294 first choices 291 places
First preferences per place at Windsor High School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 294 first preferences for 291 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Windsor High School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 287 293 266 1.02
2016/17 289 294 269 1.02
2017/18 295 327 284 1.11
2018/19 287 244 236 0.85
2019/20 280 281 257 1
2020/21 286 325 273 1.14
2021/22 290 345 287 1.19
2022/23 286 310 274 1.08
2023/24 290 340 282 1.17
2024/25 287 291 266 1.01
2025/26 287 284 259 0.99
2026/27 291 294 262 1.01

Places offered

291

in 2026/27

Named first choice

294

789 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

262 of 294

Offers to families outside the council

10%

30 of 291 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

1,400

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,429

102.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

29

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

322

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 Windsor High School and Sixth Form 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 Windsor High School and Sixth Form 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Windsor High School and Sixth Form from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,700 places 1,524 on roll 2011/12 1,700 places 1,611 on roll 2012/13 1,700 places 1,647 on roll 2013/14 1,700 places 1,645 on roll 2014/15 1,700 places 1,678 on roll 2015/16 1,700 places 1,701 on roll 2016/17 1,700 places 1,655 on roll 2017/18 1,700 places 1,610 on roll 2018/19 1,700 places 1,697 on roll 2020/21 1,700 places 1,721 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,741 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,718 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,735 on roll 2024/25 1,722 places 1,743 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Windsor High School and Sixth Form has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Windsor High School and Sixth Form. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
19 August 2014 No fault found ADA2670

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 4BB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136618).

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.