School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 60 families who named Bluecoat Wollaton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 206 and 228 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Nottingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.11

first choices for every place available

228 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bluecoat Wollaton 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 Wollaton Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 1.44 per place 213 first choices 148 places 2020/21 1.49 per place 232 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.69 per place 250 first choices 148 places 2022/23 1.49 per place 229 first choices 154 places 2023/24 1.7 per place 262 first choices 154 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 270 first choices 210 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 246 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 228 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 228 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 148 213 121 1.44
2020/21 156 232 132 1.49
2021/22 148 250 139 1.69
2022/23 154 229 141 1.49
2023/24 154 262 132 1.7
2024/25 210 270 182 1.29
2025/26 203 246 177 1.21
2026/27 206 228 168 1.11

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

228

904 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.7%

168 of 228

Offers to families outside the council

16%

32 of 206 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

810

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

826

102% of capacity

Over its capacity by

16

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 Bluecoat Wollaton 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 Wollaton Academy 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bluecoat Wollaton Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 750 places 756 on roll 2018/19 750 places 765 on roll 2020/21 750 places 781 on roll 2021/22 750 places 783 on roll 2022/23 750 places 777 on roll 2023/24 750 places 775 on roll 2024/25 810 places 826 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottingham

Postcode NG8 1EA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145146).

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.