School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queen Elizabeth's Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Queen Elizabeth's Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 124 put it first and 122 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.

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

124 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queen Elizabeth's Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Queen Elizabeth's 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

Queen Elizabeth's Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Queen Elizabeth's 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 0.43 per place 46 first choices 106 places 2016/17 0.62 per place 37 first choices 60 places 2017/18 0.44 per place 53 first choices 120 places 2018/19 0.35 per place 38 first choices 110 places 2019/20 0.36 per place 58 first choices 159 places 2020/21 0.48 per place 58 first choices 122 places 2021/22 0.44 per place 65 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.59 per place 116 first choices 196 places 2023/24 0.57 per place 107 first choices 189 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 143 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 185 first choices 177 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 124 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at Queen Elizabeth's Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 124 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queen Elizabeth's Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 106 46 46 0.43
2016/17 60 37 37 0.62
2017/18 120 53 53 0.44
2018/19 110 38 38 0.35
2019/20 159 58 56 0.36
2020/21 122 58 58 0.48
2021/22 148 65 65 0.44
2022/23 196 116 115 0.59
2023/24 189 107 107 0.57
2024/25 174 143 141 0.82
2025/26 177 185 134 1.05
2026/27 171 124 122 0.73

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

124

432 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.4%

122 of 124

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 167 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 137749.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

854

94.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

46

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Queen Elizabeth's 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 Queen Elizabeth's Academy reported 46 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Queen Elizabeth's Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,144 places 855 on roll 2012/13 1,132 places 740 on roll 2013/14 1,132 places 654 on roll 2014/15 1,132 places 554 on roll 2015/16 1,132 places 559 on roll 2016/17 1,132 places 513 on roll 2017/18 1,132 places 593 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 582 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 585 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 675 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 780 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 857 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 857 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 NG19 7AP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144486).

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.