School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 178 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

178 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form, 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 South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 2 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 South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form, 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 0.89 per place 126 first choices 142 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 124 first choices 139 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 129 first choices 149 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 144 first choices 148 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 152 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.66 per place 131 first choices 199 places 2021/22 0.7 per place 139 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 158 first choices 208 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 166 first choices 207 places 2024/25 0.76 per place 158 first choices 208 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 166 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 178 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 178 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 142 126 126 0.89
2016/17 139 124 124 0.89
2017/18 149 129 128 0.87
2018/19 148 144 130 0.97
2019/20 150 152 141 1.01
2020/21 199 131 130 0.66
2021/22 199 139 131 0.7
2022/23 208 158 158 0.76
2023/24 207 166 165 0.8
2024/25 208 158 157 0.76
2025/26 206 166 165 0.81
2026/27 168 178 156 1.06

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

178

660 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.6%

156 of 178

Offers to families outside the council

5%

8 of 168 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

814

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

875

107.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

61

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form 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 South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The South Wolds Academy & Sixth Form from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,086 places 967 on roll 2013/14 1,069 places 945 on roll 2014/15 1,069 places 929 on roll 2015/16 1,069 places 897 on roll 2016/17 1,069 places 858 on roll 2017/18 1,019 places 834 on roll 2018/19 1,114 places 819 on roll 2020/21 1,114 places 850 on roll 2021/22 1,114 places 901 on roll 2022/23 1,114 places 977 on roll 2023/24 1,114 places 1,023 on roll 2024/25 1,114 places 1,022 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 NG12 5FF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138191).

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.