School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Suthers School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Suthers School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 162 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Nottinghamshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

1.09

first choices for every place available

162 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Suthers School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Suthers 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 Suthers School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 9 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 Suthers School, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.9 per place 43 first choices 48 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 51 first choices 60 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 115 first choices 120 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 156 first choices 120 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 133 first choices 120 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 89 first choices 121 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 136 first choices 144 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 136 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 162 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at The Suthers School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 162 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Suthers School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 48 43 43 0.9
2019/20 60 51 51 0.85
2020/21 120 115 105 0.96
2021/22 120 156 118 1.3
2022/23 120 133 116 1.11
2023/24 121 89 88 0.74
2024/25 144 136 134 0.94
2025/26 149 136 132 0.91
2026/27 149 162 143 1.09

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

162

405 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.3%

143 of 162

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 149 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

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

651

93% of capacity

Unfilled places

49

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

170

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 Suthers 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 Suthers School reported 49 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Suthers School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 600 places 45 on roll 2018/19 870 places 98 on roll 2020/21 870 places 286 on roll 2021/22 870 places 417 on roll 2022/23 870 places 491 on roll 2023/24 870 places 580 on roll 2024/25 870 places 651 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG24 3NH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144768).

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.