School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bramcote College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Bramcote College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 144 and 149 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

149 first preferences for 144 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bramcote College

There is no published appeal success rate for Bramcote College, 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

Bramcote College turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Bramcote College, 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 0.72 per place 68 first choices 94 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 51 first choices 71 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 77 first choices 97 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 73 first choices 95 places 2019/20 0.71 per place 82 first choices 115 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 83 first choices 100 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 104 first choices 119 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 123 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 148 first choices 120 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 142 first choices 148 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 120 first choices 147 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 149 first choices 144 places
First preferences per place at Bramcote College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 149 first preferences for 144 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bramcote College, 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 94 68 68 0.72
2016/17 71 51 51 0.72
2017/18 97 77 77 0.79
2018/19 95 73 73 0.77
2019/20 115 82 80 0.71
2020/21 100 83 83 0.83
2021/22 119 104 104 0.87
2022/23 147 123 121 0.84
2023/24 120 148 113 1.23
2024/25 148 142 132 0.96
2025/26 147 120 120 0.82
2026/27 144 149 128 1.03

Places offered

144

in 2026/27

Named first choice

149

507 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.9%

128 of 149

Offers to families outside the council

5%

7 of 144 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

759

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

703

92.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

56

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Bramcote College 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 Bramcote College reported 56 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.6% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bramcote College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 755 places 586 on roll 2013/14 763 places 511 on roll 2014/15 763 places 480 on roll 2015/16 763 places 480 on roll 2016/17 763 places 470 on roll 2017/18 710 places 458 on roll 2018/19 755 places 467 on roll 2020/21 800 places 526 on roll 2021/22 800 places 677 on roll 2022/23 800 places 738 on roll 2023/24 800 places 778 on roll 2024/25 959 places 802 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 3GA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138837).

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.