School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bluecoat Trent Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 102 families who named Bluecoat Trent Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 and 287 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Nottingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 5 years of official figures.

1.21

first choices for every place available

287 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bluecoat Trent Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bluecoat Trent 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 Trent Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 5 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Trent Academy, 2022/23 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 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2022/23 0.31 per place 68 first choices 221 places 2023/24 0.62 per place 147 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 216 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1.69 per place 396 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 287 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at Bluecoat Trent Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 287 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bluecoat Trent Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2022/23 221 68 68 0.31
2023/24 236 147 144 0.62
2024/25 239 216 168 0.9
2025/26 235 396 212 1.69
2026/27 237 287 185 1.21

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

287

761 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.5%

185 of 287

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 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

896

74.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

304

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 Trent 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 Trent Academy reported 304 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.7% 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, 2021/22 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bluecoat Trent Academy from 2021/22 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2021/22 1,200 places 179 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 418 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 658 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 896 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottingham

Postcode NG5 1AJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148548).

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.