School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Outwood Academy Portland?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Outwood Academy Portland as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 295 and 301 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

301 first preferences for 295 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Outwood Academy Portland

There is no published appeal success rate for Outwood Academy Portland, 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

Outwood Academy Portland turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Outwood Academy Portland, 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 per place 211 first choices 212 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 243 first choices 247 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 235 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 255 first choices 289 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 293 first choices 320 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 269 first choices 295 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 305 first choices 299 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 332 first choices 300 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 296 first choices 351 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 270 first choices 322 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 295 first choices 292 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 301 first choices 295 places
First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Portland. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 301 first preferences for 295 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Outwood Academy Portland, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 212 211 211 1
2016/17 247 243 243 0.98
2017/18 237 235 235 0.99
2018/19 289 255 255 0.88
2019/20 320 293 287 0.92
2020/21 295 269 269 0.91
2021/22 299 305 273 1.02
2022/23 300 332 264 1.11
2023/24 351 296 294 0.84
2024/25 322 270 268 0.84
2025/26 292 295 281 1.01
2026/27 295 301 290 1.02

Places offered

295

in 2026/27

Named first choice

301

567 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.3%

290 of 301

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 295 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,501

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

224

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 Outwood Academy Portland 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 Outwood Academy Portland 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 Outwood Academy Portland from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,736 places 1,281 on roll 2013/14 1,578 places 1,204 on roll 2014/15 1,557 places 1,203 on roll 2015/16 1,562 places 1,163 on roll 2016/17 1,562 places 1,249 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,288 on roll 2018/19 1,828 places 1,420 on roll 2020/21 1,736 places 1,560 on roll 2021/22 1,720 places 1,607 on roll 2022/23 1,720 places 1,647 on roll 2023/24 1,720 places 1,700 on roll 2024/25 1,724 places 1,692 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 S80 2SF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138248).

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.