School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Oakwood Academy?

In 2026/27, The Oakwood Academy offered 157 places and 142 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Nottingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

0.90

first choices for every place available

142 first preferences for 157 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Oakwood Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Oakwood 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

The Oakwood Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 4 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 The Oakwood Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.8 per place 108 first choices 135 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 115 first choices 149 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 161 first choices 151 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 130 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 146 first choices 150 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 168 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 136 first choices 149 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 148 first choices 149 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 153 first choices 156 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 147 first choices 156 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 142 first choices 157 places
First preferences per place at The Oakwood Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 142 first preferences for 157 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Oakwood Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 135 108 108 0.8
2017/18 149 115 115 0.77
2018/19 151 161 129 1.07
2019/20 150 130 124 0.87
2020/21 150 146 120 0.97
2021/22 150 168 131 1.12
2022/23 149 136 120 0.91
2023/24 149 148 132 0.99
2024/25 156 153 138 0.98
2025/26 156 147 128 0.94
2026/27 157 142 142 0.9

Places offered

157

in 2026/27

Named first choice

142

292 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

142 of 142

Offers to families outside the council

12%

19 of 154 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

730

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

733

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

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 The Oakwood 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 The Oakwood 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Oakwood Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 750 places 711 on roll 2015/16 750 places 710 on roll 2016/17 750 places 688 on roll 2017/18 750 places 685 on roll 2018/19 750 places 681 on roll 2020/21 750 places 728 on roll 2021/22 750 places 744 on roll 2022/23 750 places 743 on roll 2023/24 750 places 754 on roll 2024/25 730 places 733 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 9PJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141363).

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.