School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Elizabethan Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 42 families who named The Elizabethan Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 276 put it first.

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

1.17

first choices for every place available

276 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Elizabethan Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Elizabethan 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

The Elizabethan 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 The Elizabethan 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 0.92 per place 133 first choices 144 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 141 first choices 159 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 141 first choices 155 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 145 first choices 157 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 188 first choices 200 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 201 first choices 208 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 172 first choices 193 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 255 first choices 230 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 277 first choices 227 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 261 first choices 226 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 294 first choices 224 places 2026/27 1.17 per place 276 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at The Elizabethan Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 276 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Elizabethan Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 144 133 133 0.92
2016/17 159 141 141 0.89
2017/18 155 141 141 0.91
2018/19 157 145 145 0.92
2019/20 200 188 187 0.94
2020/21 208 201 201 0.97
2021/22 193 172 172 0.89
2022/23 230 255 216 1.11
2023/24 227 277 219 1.22
2024/25 226 261 223 1.15
2025/26 224 294 220 1.31
2026/27 236 276 234 1.17

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

276

591 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.8%

234 of 276

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 236 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Elizabethan Academy published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for The Elizabethan Academy, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children and all previously looked after children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. Previously looked after children are children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order).’
2 Children of an employee of The Elizabethan Academy Trust on the closing date for applications preceding admission to secondary school and has been for two or more years or who has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
3 Children who live in catchment area and attend a Linked School and who, at the time of admission, will have a sibling attending The Elizabethan Academy. Where applications are received in respect of twins, triplets or children of other multiple births we will endeavour to offer the relevant number of places admitting above the planned admission number where appropriate.
4 Children who do not live in catchment area but attend a Linked School and who, at the time of admission, will have a sibling attending The Elizabethan Academy. Where applications are received in respect of twins, triplets or children of other multiple births we will endeavour to offer the relevant number of places admitting above the planned admission number where appropriate.
5 Children who live in catchment area and who, at the time of admission, will have a sibling attending The Elizabethan Academy. Where applications are received in respect of twins, triplets or children of other multiple births we will endeavour to offer the relevant number of places admitting above the planned admission number where appropriate.
6 Children who live in the catchment area on the closing date of the application and attend a Linked Schools on the closing date for applications.
7 Children who live outside the catchment area but attend a Linked School on the closing date for applications
8 Children who live in the catchment area on the closing date of the application.
9 Children who live outside the catchment area do not attend a Linked School and who, at the time of admission, will have a sibling attending The Elizabethan Academy. Where applications are received in respect of twins, triplets or children of other multiple births we will endeavour to offer the relevant number of places admitting above the planned admission number where appropriate.
10 Other Children SIXTH FORM ADMISSIONS The admission number for year 12 entry into the sixth form for external pupils is 25 with the overall capacity of the centre 106. Admissions into the sixth form will be allocated to those who have applied by the closing date taking regard to the following factors set out in order of priority:
11 Looked after children and all previously looked after children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. Previously looked after children are children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order).’
12 Whether there is a sibling on roll at The Elizabethan Academy at the time of entry to the sixth form. Where applications are received in respect of twins, triplets or children of other multiple births we will endeavour to offer the relevant number of places admitting above the planned admission number where appropriate.
13 Priority will be given to children who live nearest to the school as the crow flies (by straight line). Distance is measured from the applicant’s home to the entrance of the school (reception) in a straight line (as the crow flies) calculated using ‘Google Maps Distance Calculator’.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

The Elizabethan Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,155

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,092

94.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

63

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

106

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 The Elizabethan 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 The Elizabethan Academy reported 63 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.5% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Elizabethan Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,258 places 1,178 on roll 2012/13 1,458 places 1,152 on roll 2013/14 1,334 places 1,088 on roll 2014/15 1,334 places 1,043 on roll 2015/16 1,313 places 991 on roll 2016/17 1,313 places 945 on roll 2017/18 1,363 places 877 on roll 2018/19 1,458 places 879 on roll 2020/21 1,458 places 1,000 on roll 2021/22 1,458 places 1,061 on roll 2022/23 1,458 places 1,130 on roll 2023/24 1,458 places 1,196 on roll 2024/25 1,261 places 1,200 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Elizabethan Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Elizabethan Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
19 September 2023 Arrangements did not comply ADA4198

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottinghamshire

Postcode DN22 7PY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138076).

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.