School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Carlton Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Carlton Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 296 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Carlton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Carlton 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 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

Carlton Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Carlton Academy, 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 1.03 per place 175 first choices 170 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 177 first choices 188 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 210 first choices 190 places 2018/19 1.31 per place 248 first choices 190 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 181 first choices 196 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 237 first choices 229 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 256 first choices 230 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 290 first choices 260 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 268 first choices 258 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 301 first choices 231 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 305 first choices 257 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 296 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Carlton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Carlton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 170 175 168 1.03
2016/17 188 177 167 0.94
2017/18 190 210 187 1.11
2018/19 190 248 179 1.31
2019/20 196 181 180 0.92
2020/21 229 237 205 1.03
2021/22 230 256 224 1.11
2022/23 260 290 240 1.12
2023/24 258 268 252 1.04
2024/25 231 301 226 1.3
2025/26 257 305 253 1.19
2026/27 257 296 257 1.15

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

662 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

257 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

4%

10 of 257 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,188

103.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

150

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 Carlton 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 Carlton 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Carlton Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 997 places 706 on roll 2012/13 1,061 places 647 on roll 2013/14 1,180 places 595 on roll 2014/15 1,180 places 748 on roll 2015/16 989 places 793 on roll 2016/17 986 places 877 on roll 2017/18 1,001 places 887 on roll 2018/19 1,106 places 989 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,159 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,239 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,297 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,323 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,355 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
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG4 3SH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137085).

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.