School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fernwood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 140 families who named Fernwood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 293 and 426 put it first.

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

1.45

first choices for every place available

426 first preferences for 293 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fernwood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fernwood 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 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

Fernwood School 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 Fernwood 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 1.44 per place 288 first choices 200 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 251 first choices 200 places 2017/18 1.42 per place 296 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 271 first choices 210 places 2019/20 1.29 per place 270 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 234 first choices 300 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 272 first choices 297 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 304 first choices 297 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 305 first choices 303 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 358 first choices 298 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 320 first choices 278 places 2026/27 1.45 per place 426 first choices 293 places
First preferences per place at Fernwood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 426 first preferences for 293 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fernwood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 200 288 199 1.44
2016/17 200 251 198 1.25
2017/18 209 296 207 1.42
2018/19 210 271 207 1.29
2019/20 210 270 208 1.29
2020/21 300 234 231 0.78
2021/22 297 272 252 0.92
2022/23 297 304 280 1.02
2023/24 303 305 276 1.01
2024/25 298 358 286 1.2
2025/26 278 320 271 1.15
2026/27 293 426 286 1.45

Places offered

293

in 2026/27

Named first choice

426

796 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.1%

286 of 426

Offers to families outside the council

2%

7 of 293 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Fernwood School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Fernwood School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Places will first be allocated to a “Looked After Child” or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. A Looked After Child is a child who is (a) in the care of the local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions in accordance with section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989 at the time of making an application to a school. […] criterion continues in the source document
2 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who, at the closing date for applications, live within the catchment area and have a sibling already attending the school whom is expected still to be on roll on the proposed date of admission of the applicant pupil.
3 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who, at the closing date for applications, live within the catchment area.
4 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who live outside the catchment area who, at the closing date for applications, attend one of the designated feeder schools, and have a sibling already attending the school (i.e. The Fernwood School) and whom is expected still to be on roll on the proposed date of admission of the applicant pupil.
5 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who live outside the catchment area who, at the closing date for applications attend one of the designated feeder schools.
6 Places will then be offered to children of staff at the school in either or both of the following circumstances:-
a) where the member of staff has been employed at the Academy for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or
b) the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skills shortage.
7 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who live outside the catchment area, who, at the closing date for applications, have a sibling already attending the school whom is expected still to be on roll on the proposed date of admission of the applicant pupil.
8 Places will then be allocated to other pupils who live outside the catchment area. Exceptional Circumstances The above criteria (2-8) may be overridden and priority given to an applicant for whom it can be demonstrated that they have a specific medical or social need that makes it essential that they attend The Fernwood School rather than any other school. Each case will be considered on its merits by the Governors who will determine whether the evidence provided is sufficiently compelling to meet the requirements for this criterion. The evidence must relate specifically to The Fernwood School and must clearly demonstrate why Fernwood is the only school that can meet the child’s needs. […] criterion continues in the source document
• Specific professional evidence from a registered health professional such as a doctor that justifies why only The Fernwood School can meet the child’s individual medical needs, and/or
• Specific professional evidence from a local authority social worker that outlines exceptional family circumstances that justifies why only The Fernwood School can meet the child’s individual social needs; and
• If The Fernwood School is not the nearest school to the child’s home address clear reasons why the nearest school is not appropriate

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Fernwood School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,538

102.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

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 Fernwood 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 Fernwood 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fernwood School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,000 places 1,017 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 1,015 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,017 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,015 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,009 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,007 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,020 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,025 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,127 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,224 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,335 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,435 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,538 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
Nottingham

Postcode NG8 2FT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136724).

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.