School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wales High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Wales High School as their first choice did not get a place: 271 put it first and 270 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

271 first preferences for 277 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wales High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wales High 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 Rotherham 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 Rotherham, 50.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 232 of 460 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 Rotherham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rotherham 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

Wales High School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Wales High 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 0.99 per place 263 first choices 267 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 291 first choices 294 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 297 first choices 304 places 2018/19 1 per place 330 first choices 331 places 2019/20 1.29 per place 356 first choices 275 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 400 first choices 309 places 2021/22 1.24 per place 373 first choices 300 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 328 first choices 305 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 351 first choices 304 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 311 first choices 300 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 347 first choices 294 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 271 first choices 277 places
First preferences per place at Wales High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 271 first preferences for 277 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wales High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 267 263 262 0.99
2016/17 294 291 290 0.99
2017/18 304 297 297 0.98
2018/19 331 330 323 1
2019/20 275 356 268 1.29
2020/21 309 400 305 1.29
2021/22 300 373 297 1.24
2022/23 305 328 301 1.08
2023/24 304 351 297 1.15
2024/25 300 311 291 1.04
2025/26 294 347 293 1.18
2026/27 277 271 270 0.98

Places offered

277

in 2026/27

Named first choice

271

489 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.6%

270 of 271

Offers to families outside the council

10%

28 of 277 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

1,446

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,542

106.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

96

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

346

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 Wales High 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 Wales High 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 Wales High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,586 places 1,581 on roll 2011/12 1,586 places 1,579 on roll 2012/13 1,586 places 1,538 on roll 2013/14 1,586 places 1,554 on roll 2014/15 1,586 places 1,542 on roll 2015/16 1,586 places 1,563 on roll 2016/17 1,586 places 1,604 on roll 2017/18 1,586 places 1,673 on roll 2018/19 1,736 places 1,733 on roll 2020/21 1,867 places 1,832 on roll 2021/22 1,867 places 1,814 on roll 2022/23 1,867 places 1,848 on roll 2023/24 1,867 places 1,831 on roll 2024/25 1,792 places 1,788 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. Wales High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Wales High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 July 2023 Arrangements did not comply REF4143

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
Rotherham

Postcode S26 5QQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136331).

Other contested secondary schools in Rotherham

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.