School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Joseph Whitaker School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named The Joseph Whitaker School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 243 and 296 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 243 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Joseph Whitaker School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Joseph Whitaker School, 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 Joseph Whitaker School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Joseph Whitaker School, 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 1.04 per place 220 first choices 211 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 208 first choices 211 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 263 first choices 241 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 247 first choices 244 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 252 first choices 244 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 251 first choices 244 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 289 first choices 245 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 263 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 256 first choices 242 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 238 first choices 242 places 2025/26 1 per place 241 first choices 242 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 296 first choices 243 places
First preferences per place at The Joseph Whitaker School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 243 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Joseph Whitaker School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 211 220 207 1.04
2016/17 211 208 205 0.99
2017/18 241 263 236 1.09
2018/19 244 247 236 1.01
2019/20 244 252 238 1.03
2020/21 244 251 240 1.03
2021/22 245 289 244 1.18
2022/23 235 263 234 1.12
2023/24 242 256 240 1.06
2024/25 242 238 237 0.98
2025/26 242 241 235 1
2026/27 243 296 240 1.22

Places offered

243

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

570 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.1%

240 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 243 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

1,175

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,177

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

210

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 Joseph Whitaker School 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 Joseph Whitaker School 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 The Joseph Whitaker School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,292 places 1,239 on roll 2012/13 1,288 places 1,203 on roll 2013/14 1,288 places 1,199 on roll 2014/15 1,269 places 1,213 on roll 2015/16 1,269 places 1,243 on roll 2016/17 1,269 places 1,246 on roll 2017/18 1,269 places 1,259 on roll 2018/19 1,262 places 1,268 on roll 2020/21 1,265 places 1,331 on roll 2021/22 1,370 places 1,365 on roll 2022/23 1,385 places 1,365 on roll 2023/24 1,385 places 1,363 on roll 2024/25 1,385 places 1,321 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG21 0AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137628).

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.