School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bluecoat Beechdale Academy?

In 2026/27, Bluecoat Beechdale Academy offered 177 places and 127 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.72

first choices for every place available

127 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bluecoat Beechdale Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bluecoat Beechdale Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Nottingham 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 Nottingham, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 226 of 1,149 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 Nottingham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Nottingham 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

Bluecoat Beechdale Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Bluecoat Beechdale Academy, 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 0.67 per place 103 first choices 154 places 2016/17 0.61 per place 102 first choices 166 places 2017/18 0.56 per place 111 first choices 200 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 109 first choices 171 places 2019/20 0.64 per place 115 first choices 180 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 144 first choices 194 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 147 first choices 177 places 2022/23 0.81 per place 154 first choices 190 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 178 first choices 183 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 171 first choices 179 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 161 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.72 per place 127 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at Bluecoat Beechdale Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 127 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bluecoat Beechdale Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 154 103 103 0.67
2016/17 166 102 102 0.61
2017/18 200 111 111 0.56
2018/19 171 109 109 0.64
2019/20 180 115 113 0.64
2020/21 194 144 141 0.74
2021/22 177 147 135 0.83
2022/23 190 154 150 0.81
2023/24 183 178 150 0.97
2024/25 179 171 153 0.96
2025/26 179 161 150 0.9
2026/27 177 127 127 0.72

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

127

309 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

127 of 127

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 167 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

891

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

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 Bluecoat Beechdale Academy 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 Bluecoat Beechdale Academy reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Bluecoat Beechdale Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 900 places 434 on roll 2014/15 900 places 507 on roll 2015/16 900 places 569 on roll 2016/17 900 places 621 on roll 2017/18 900 places 700 on roll 2018/19 900 places 794 on roll 2020/21 900 places 886 on roll 2021/22 900 places 895 on roll 2022/23 900 places 897 on roll 2023/24 900 places 904 on roll 2024/25 900 places 891 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottingham

Postcode NG8 3GP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140369).

Other contested secondary schools in Nottingham

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.