School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at George Salter Academy?

In 2026/27, George Salter Academy offered 218 places and 153 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.70

first choices for every place available

153 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at George Salter Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for George Salter 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 Sandwell 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 Sandwell, 9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 98 of 1,092 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 Sandwell.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sandwell 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

George Salter Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at George Salter Academy, 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 1.37 per place 273 first choices 199 places 2016/17 1.64 per place 329 first choices 201 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 286 first choices 199 places 2018/19 1.35 per place 271 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 273 first choices 270 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 246 first choices 250 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 267 first choices 246 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 221 first choices 249 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 251 first choices 247 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 243 first choices 245 places 2025/26 0.79 per place 197 first choices 248 places 2026/27 0.7 per place 153 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at George Salter Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 153 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at George Salter Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 199 273 161 1.37
2016/17 201 329 171 1.64
2017/18 199 286 157 1.44
2018/19 200 271 170 1.35
2019/20 270 273 220 1.01
2020/21 250 246 189 0.98
2021/22 246 267 201 1.09
2022/23 249 221 190 0.89
2023/24 247 251 207 1.02
2024/25 245 243 204 0.99
2025/26 248 197 185 0.79
2026/27 218 153 153 0.7

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

153

488 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

153 of 153

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 205 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

1,302

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,249

95.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

53

across Years 7 to 11

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 George Salter 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 George Salter Academy reported 53 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at George Salter Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,150 places 899 on roll 2010/11 900 places 898 on roll 2011/12 1,100 places 1,103 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,069 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,161 on roll 2014/15 1,494 places 1,222 on roll 2015/16 1,294 places 1,262 on roll 2016/17 1,294 places 1,268 on roll 2017/18 1,294 places 1,293 on roll 2018/19 1,294 places 1,277 on roll 2020/21 1,344 places 1,329 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,351 on roll 2022/23 1,602 places 1,409 on roll 2023/24 1,602 places 1,466 on roll 2024/25 1,602 places 1,431 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. George Salter Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming George Salter Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
7 October 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3241

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sandwell

Postcode B70 9UW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135234).

Other contested secondary schools in Sandwell

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.