School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at South Nottinghamshire Academy?

In 2026/27, South Nottinghamshire Academy offered 177 places and 159 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.90

first choices for every place available

159 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at South Nottinghamshire Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for South Nottinghamshire 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

South Nottinghamshire Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 South Nottinghamshire 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 0.94 per place 101 first choices 107 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 98 first choices 104 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 111 first choices 117 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 140 first choices 150 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 129 first choices 142 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 172 first choices 150 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 178 first choices 150 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 153 first choices 151 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 170 first choices 152 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 170 first choices 151 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 175 first choices 177 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 159 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at South Nottinghamshire Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 159 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at South Nottinghamshire Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 107 101 101 0.94
2016/17 104 98 98 0.94
2017/18 117 111 111 0.95
2018/19 150 140 140 0.93
2019/20 142 129 129 0.91
2020/21 150 172 150 1.15
2021/22 150 178 146 1.19
2022/23 151 153 146 1.01
2023/24 152 170 152 1.12
2024/25 151 170 147 1.13
2025/26 177 175 172 0.99
2026/27 177 159 159 0.9

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

159

561 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

159 of 159

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 176 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

807

107.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

57

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 South Nottinghamshire 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 South Nottinghamshire 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 South Nottinghamshire Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,216 places 537 on roll 2012/13 1,214 places 519 on roll 2013/14 1,114 places 478 on roll 2014/15 1,114 places 488 on roll 2015/16 750 places 521 on roll 2016/17 750 places 536 on roll 2017/18 723 places 561 on roll 2018/19 800 places 626 on roll 2020/21 700 places 751 on roll 2021/22 800 places 790 on roll 2022/23 900 places 840 on roll 2023/24 900 places 878 on roll 2024/25 900 places 943 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 NG12 2FQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137112).

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.