School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The West Bridgford School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 67 families who named The West Bridgford School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 267 and 331 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

331 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The West Bridgford School

There is no published appeal success rate for The West Bridgford 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 West Bridgford School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The West Bridgford 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 1.18 per place 308 first choices 260 places 2016/17 1.18 per place 321 first choices 272 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 307 first choices 274 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 349 first choices 269 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 345 first choices 287 places 2020/21 1.4 per place 375 first choices 267 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 319 first choices 270 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 347 first choices 269 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 358 first choices 274 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 330 first choices 268 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 337 first choices 268 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 331 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at The West Bridgford School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 331 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The West Bridgford School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 260 308 256 1.18
2016/17 272 321 272 1.18
2017/18 274 307 262 1.12
2018/19 269 349 265 1.3
2019/20 287 345 283 1.2
2020/21 267 375 266 1.4
2021/22 270 319 261 1.18
2022/23 269 347 264 1.29
2023/24 274 358 270 1.31
2024/25 268 330 262 1.23
2025/26 268 337 265 1.26
2026/27 267 331 264 1.24

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

331

1,078 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.8%

264 of 331

Offers to families outside the council

3%

8 of 267 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

1,255

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,353

107.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

98

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

292

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 West Bridgford 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 West Bridgford 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The West Bridgford School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,385 places 1,434 on roll 2011/12 1,279 places 1,454 on roll 2012/13 1,326 places 1,473 on roll 2013/14 1,332 places 1,457 on roll 2014/15 1,332 places 1,452 on roll 2015/16 1,465 places 1,511 on roll 2016/17 1,465 places 1,563 on roll 2017/18 1,406 places 1,573 on roll 2018/19 1,470 places 1,641 on roll 2020/21 1,372 places 1,727 on roll 2021/22 1,372 places 1,746 on roll 2022/23 1,372 places 1,753 on roll 2023/24 1,547 places 1,784 on roll 2024/25 1,547 places 1,777 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 West Bridgford School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming The West Bridgford School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
5 June 2015 No fault found ADA2838, ADA2839 and ADA2840
19 July 2012 Arrangements did not comply ADA2300

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 NG2 7FA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136628).

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.