School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sandwell Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 172 families who named Sandwell Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 197 and 321 put it first.

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

1.63

first choices for every place available

321 first preferences for 197 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sandwell Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sandwell 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

Sandwell Academy 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 Sandwell Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.92 per place 525 first choices 180 places 2016/17 2.54 per place 508 first choices 200 places 2017/18 3.17 per place 631 first choices 199 places 2018/19 3.52 per place 703 first choices 200 places 2019/20 3.12 per place 625 first choices 200 places 2020/21 3.04 per place 596 first choices 196 places 2021/22 2.58 per place 515 first choices 200 places 2022/23 2.54 per place 492 first choices 194 places 2023/24 2.39 per place 458 first choices 192 places 2024/25 2.11 per place 414 first choices 196 places 2025/26 1.99 per place 390 first choices 196 places 2026/27 1.63 per place 321 first choices 197 places
First preferences per place at Sandwell Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 321 first preferences for 197 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sandwell Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 525 158 2.92
2016/17 200 508 168 2.54
2017/18 199 631 170 3.17
2018/19 200 703 180 3.52
2019/20 200 625 163 3.12
2020/21 196 596 170 3.04
2021/22 200 515 164 2.58
2022/23 194 492 161 2.54
2023/24 192 458 163 2.39
2024/25 196 414 154 2.11
2025/26 196 390 161 1.99
2026/27 197 321 149 1.63

Places offered

197

in 2026/27

Named first choice

321

1,115 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

46.4%

149 of 321

Offers to families outside the council

6%

11 of 197 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Sandwell Academy published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Sandwell Academy, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 A 'looked after child' or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order including those who appear [to the admission authority] to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. A looked after child is a child who is (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989).
2 Up to 10% of the total number of students based on sporting aptitude (i.e. up to 20). Places based on sporting aptitude will be allocated by numerical scores, based on a series of internationally recognised and standardised physical tests, to determine potential to succeed at a high level in Sport. The physical tests will measure aerobic endurance, speed, power, agility, co- ordination and flexibility. The physical tests are generic and measure aptitude across a range of sports for which the Academy has expertise and facilities.
3 Children of teachers who have been employed by the Academy, for two or more years at the time the application is made, or the parent/carer has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. Up to 5 applicants will be considered under this criteria. Priority will be determined on the basis of distance between an applicant’s home address and the centroid point nearest to their home.
4 Thereafter, taking into account priorities 1, 2, 3, and above, for the towns Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Tipton and Wednesbury up to 30 places will be allocated and for the towns West Bromwich and Smethwick up to 40 places will be allocated, on the basis of distance between an applicant’s home address and the centroid point nearest to their home. Distance will be calculated according to a straight line measurement between the applicant’s home and the centroid point (as the crow flies). There will be six centroid points, one each in Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich - see Centroid Map. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Sandwell Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

930

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,000

107.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

70

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Sandwell 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 Sandwell Academy 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sandwell Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 1,027 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 1,177 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,223 on roll 2012/13 1,260 places 1,272 on roll 2013/14 1,260 places 1,251 on roll 2014/15 1,260 places 1,265 on roll 2015/16 1,260 places 1,242 on roll 2016/17 1,260 places 1,259 on roll 2017/18 1,260 places 1,284 on roll 2018/19 1,270 places 1,273 on roll 2020/21 1,270 places 1,335 on roll 2021/22 1,330 places 1,359 on roll 2022/23 1,330 places 1,325 on roll 2023/24 1,330 places 1,386 on roll 2024/25 1,330 places 1,452 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sandwell

Postcode B71 4LG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 134993).

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.