Refused a place at The National CofE Academy?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 59 families who named The National CofE Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 261 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Nottinghamshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
261 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at The National CofE Academy
There is no published appeal success rate for The National CofE 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.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
The National CofE Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | 210 | 207 | 205 | 0.99 |
| 2016/17 | 211 | 242 | 210 | 1.15 |
| 2017/18 | 240 | 289 | 235 | 1.2 |
| 2018/19 | 240 | 292 | 236 | 1.22 |
| 2019/20 | 210 | 259 | 209 | 1.23 |
| 2020/21 | 210 | 257 | 208 | 1.22 |
| 2021/22 | 210 | 267 | 208 | 1.27 |
| 2022/23 | 210 | 282 | 204 | 1.34 |
| 2023/24 | 209 | 271 | 205 | 1.3 |
| 2024/25 | 207 | 275 | 205 | 1.33 |
| 2025/26 | 210 | 254 | 205 | 1.21 |
| 2026/27 | 207 | 261 | 202 | 1.26 |
Places offered
207
in 2026/27
Named first choice
261
487 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
77.4%
202 of 261
Offers to families outside the council
1%
3 of 207 offers
How places were ranked
These are the oversubscription criteria The National CofE 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.
| Rank | Criterion, as the school words it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A “looked after child” (LAC), a child who was previously looked after (PLAC) by an English local authority or an internationally adopted previously looked after child, (IAPLAC). Children looked after by a local authority and all previously looked after children, including those children who appear to the admissions authority to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (or became subject to a residence order or special guardianship order). See definitions page. |
| 2 | Children will then be prioritised in accordance with the Definition ‘Worship’ (see definitions page) using the below criteria. The governing body will consider all Supplementary Information Forms (submitted on time), and it is at the discretion of the governing body to decide whether this criteria will be applied. Within each criterion, places will be allocated in order of regularity of worship. |
| a) Children who have worshipped at a Church of England Church, and have done so for a period of 12 months prior to the application deadline. Applications will be prioritised within this category using the following criteria: i. Whether the child is at the heart of the church ii. Whether the child is attached to the church | |
| b. Children who have worshipped at any Christian Church which is a member of Churches Together in England, and have done so for a period of 12 months prior to the application deadline. Applications will be prioritised within this category using the following criteria: i. Whether the child is at the heart of the church ii. Whether the child is attached to the church | |
| c. Children who have worshipped at a place of worship of another recognised world faith, and have done so for a period of 12 months prior to the application deadline. Applications will be prioritised within this category using the following criteria: i. Whether the child is at the heart of the church ii. Whether the child is attached to the church Applicants are advised that the parent is required to complete the relevant section of the Supplementary Information Form and have it counter-signed by their Minister of Religion. This Supplementary Information Form must be returned to the school by the closing date. Please see measurement of attendance (additional information) for church closures. | |
| 3 | Children who will have a sibling (as defined below) on the National C of E Academy roll at the time of admission. |
| 4 | Children of staff in either or both of the following circumstances: |
| • where a member of staff has been employed at the Academy for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the Academy is made, and/or | |
| • the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable staff shortage. | |
| 5 | All other children - remaining places will be allocated to children who live nearest to the Academy measured as the crow flies. In the event of over-subscription within each of the criteria, priority will be given to children who live nearest to the school as the crow flies (by straight line). Distances are measured from the child’s home address to the main school ‘IN’ gate as the crow flies using the website www.freemaptools.com. If more than one applicant meets exactly the same admission criteria the Academy will rank in accordance with a random allocation by lot conducted by a body independent of National C of E Academy. […] criterion continues in the source document |
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 National CofE 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
1,080
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
1,030
95.4% of capacity
Unfilled places
50
across Years 7 to 11
Sixth form places
104
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 National CofE 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 National CofE Academy reported 50 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.4% 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
Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Nottinghamshire does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Academy converter
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- Faith
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Nottinghamshire
Postcode NG15 7DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137159).
Other contested secondary schools in Nottinghamshire
- All Saints' Catholic Voluntary Academy 1.42 first choices per place
- The Becket School 1.34 first choices per place
- Alderman White School 1.24 first choices per place
- The West Bridgford School 1.24 first choices per place
- The Joseph Whitaker School 1.22 first choices per place
- The Elizabethan Academy 1.17 first choices per place
- Carlton Academy 1.15 first choices per place
- The Suthers School 1.09 first choices per place
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.