School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alderman White School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Alderman White School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 185 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alderman White School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alderman White 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 Nottinghamshire 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 Nottinghamshire, 24.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 340 of 1,374 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 Nottinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Nottinghamshire 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

Alderman White School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Alderman White 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 0.88 per place 112 first choices 127 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 109 first choices 127 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 93 first choices 110 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 87 first choices 115 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 137 first choices 158 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 162 first choices 145 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 179 first choices 143 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 187 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 197 first choices 155 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 199 first choices 155 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 203 first choices 146 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 185 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Alderman White School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alderman White School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 127 112 112 0.88
2016/17 127 109 109 0.86
2017/18 110 93 93 0.85
2018/19 115 87 87 0.76
2019/20 158 137 137 0.87
2020/21 145 162 139 1.12
2021/22 143 179 137 1.25
2022/23 147 187 141 1.27
2023/24 155 197 150 1.27
2024/25 155 199 150 1.28
2025/26 146 203 144 1.39
2026/27 149 185 142 1.24

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

581 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.8%

142 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 149 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

725

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

763

105.2% 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 Alderman White 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 Alderman White 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Alderman White School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,465 places 776 on roll 2013/14 1,589 places 787 on roll 2014/15 1,589 places 814 on roll 2015/16 1,589 places 835 on roll 2016/17 1,589 places 802 on roll 2017/18 1,025 places 764 on roll 2018/19 1,465 places 742 on roll 2020/21 725 places 763 on roll 2021/22 725 places 715 on roll 2022/23 725 places 754 on roll 2023/24 725 places 769 on roll 2024/25 725 places 763 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
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG9 3DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138832).

Other contested secondary schools in Nottinghamshire

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.