School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wodensborough Ormiston Academy?

In 2026/27, Wodensborough Ormiston Academy offered 210 places and 201 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.

0.96

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wodensborough Ormiston Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wodensborough Ormiston 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

Wodensborough Ormiston Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Wodensborough Ormiston 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 0.64 per place 80 first choices 125 places 2016/17 0.6 per place 86 first choices 144 places 2017/18 0.63 per place 111 first choices 177 places 2018/19 0.59 per place 116 first choices 195 places 2019/20 0.7 per place 144 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 158 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 143 first choices 178 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 208 first choices 215 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 219 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 220 first choices 214 places 2025/26 0.86 per place 176 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 201 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at Wodensborough Ormiston Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wodensborough Ormiston Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 125 80 79 0.64
2016/17 144 86 86 0.6
2017/18 177 111 111 0.63
2018/19 195 116 116 0.59
2019/20 207 144 144 0.7
2020/21 207 158 158 0.76
2021/22 178 143 143 0.8
2022/23 215 208 199 0.97
2023/24 233 219 211 0.94
2024/25 214 220 201 1.03
2025/26 205 176 176 0.86
2026/27 210 201 201 0.96

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

391 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

201 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 210 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

899

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,116

124.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

217

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

270

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 Wodensborough Ormiston 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 Wodensborough Ormiston 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wodensborough Ormiston Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,169 places 962 on roll 2014/15 1,169 places 922 on roll 2015/16 1,152 places 882 on roll 2016/17 1,152 places 865 on roll 2017/18 1,152 places 879 on roll 2018/19 1,152 places 950 on roll 2020/21 1,152 places 1,107 on roll 2021/22 1,169 places 1,122 on roll 2022/23 1,169 places 1,150 on roll 2023/24 1,169 places 1,168 on roll 2024/25 1,169 places 1,138 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 WS10 0DR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139918).

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.