School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Outwood Academy Valley?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Outwood Academy Valley as their first choice did not get a place: 293 put it first and 290 of them were offered one.

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

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

293 first preferences for 295 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Outwood Academy Valley

There is no published appeal success rate for Outwood Academy Valley, 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 Valley 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 Outwood Academy Valley, 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 283 first choices 284 places 2016/17 1 per place 256 first choices 256 places 2017/18 1 per place 301 first choices 300 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 332 first choices 300 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 371 first choices 373 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 322 first choices 298 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 349 first choices 299 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 313 first choices 299 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 361 first choices 298 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 350 first choices 292 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 288 first choices 295 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 293 first choices 295 places
First preferences per place at Outwood Academy Valley. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 293 first preferences for 295 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Outwood Academy Valley, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 284 283 283 1
2016/17 256 256 256 1
2017/18 300 301 299 1
2018/19 300 332 299 1.11
2019/20 373 371 344 0.99
2020/21 298 322 296 1.08
2021/22 299 349 287 1.17
2022/23 299 313 267 1.05
2023/24 298 361 297 1.21
2024/25 292 350 291 1.2
2025/26 295 288 285 0.98
2026/27 295 293 290 0.99

Places offered

295

in 2026/27

Named first choice

293

536 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99%

290 of 293

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 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

1,477

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

23

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

209

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 Valley 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 Valley reported 23 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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 Outwood Academy Valley 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 1,700 places 1,589 on roll 2013/14 1,532 places 1,597 on roll 2014/15 1,532 places 1,591 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 1,562 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,542 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,568 on roll 2018/19 1,815 places 1,631 on roll 2020/21 1,709 places 1,712 on roll 2021/22 1,709 places 1,722 on roll 2022/23 1,709 places 1,733 on roll 2023/24 1,709 places 1,717 on roll 2024/25 1,709 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 S81 7EN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138247).

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.