School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Nottingham Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 73 families who named Nottingham Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 185 put it first.

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

1.54

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Nottingham Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for Nottingham Free 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

Nottingham Free School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 Nottingham Free 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 1.16 per place 104 first choices 90 places 2016/17 1.63 per place 147 first choices 90 places 2017/18 1.94 per place 184 first choices 95 places 2018/19 1.84 per place 180 first choices 98 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 140 first choices 114 places 2020/21 1.63 per place 194 first choices 119 places 2021/22 1.62 per place 191 first choices 118 places 2022/23 1.78 per place 214 first choices 120 places 2023/24 1.58 per place 190 first choices 120 places 2024/25 1.53 per place 184 first choices 120 places 2025/26 1.38 per place 160 first choices 116 places 2026/27 1.54 per place 185 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Nottingham Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Nottingham Free 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 90 104 79 1.16
2016/17 90 147 76 1.63
2017/18 95 184 89 1.94
2018/19 98 180 90 1.84
2019/20 114 140 98 1.23
2020/21 119 194 104 1.63
2021/22 118 191 114 1.62
2022/23 120 214 117 1.78
2023/24 120 190 113 1.58
2024/25 120 184 112 1.53
2025/26 116 160 105 1.38
2026/27 120 185 112 1.54

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

487 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.5%

112 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 120 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

560

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

600

107.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

40

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

66

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 Nottingham Free 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 Nottingham Free 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Nottingham Free School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 450 places 91 on roll 2015/16 450 places 181 on roll 2016/17 450 places 272 on roll 2017/18 450 places 369 on roll 2018/19 587 places 476 on roll 2020/21 612 places 611 on roll 2021/22 626 places 620 on roll 2022/23 626 places 659 on roll 2023/24 626 places 678 on roll 2024/25 626 places 672 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 1EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141010).

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.