School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Park Vale Academy?

In 2026/27, Park Vale Academy offered 186 places and 168 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Nottingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

0.90

first choices for every place available

168 first preferences for 186 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Park Vale Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Park Vale 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

Park Vale Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 10 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 Park Vale Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.92 per place 159 first choices 173 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 126 first choices 152 places 2019/20 0.76 per place 127 first choices 168 places 2020/21 0.69 per place 128 first choices 185 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 99 first choices 160 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 156 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 144 first choices 181 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 155 first choices 173 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 162 first choices 178 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 168 first choices 186 places
First preferences per place at Park Vale Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 186 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Park Vale Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 173 159 159 0.92
2018/19 152 126 126 0.83
2019/20 168 127 127 0.76
2020/21 185 128 128 0.69
2021/22 160 99 99 0.62
2022/23 180 156 156 0.87
2023/24 181 144 141 0.8
2024/25 173 155 155 0.9
2025/26 178 162 144 0.91
2026/27 186 168 168 0.9

Places offered

186

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

341 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

168 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

10%

18 of 185 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

893

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

7

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 Park Vale 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 Park Vale Academy reported 7 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Park Vale Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 900 places 706 on roll 2017/18 900 places 762 on roll 2018/19 900 places 786 on roll 2020/21 900 places 844 on roll 2021/22 900 places 843 on roll 2022/23 900 places 886 on roll 2023/24 900 places 896 on roll 2024/25 900 places 893 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 NG5 9AZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144487).

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.