School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wood Green Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Wood Green Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 256 and 260 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

260 first preferences for 256 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wood Green Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wood Green 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

Wood Green 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 Wood Green 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 1.22 per place 311 first choices 255 places 2016/17 1.2 per place 305 first choices 254 places 2017/18 1.4 per place 351 first choices 251 places 2018/19 1.57 per place 381 first choices 243 places 2019/20 1.41 per place 365 first choices 259 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 343 first choices 255 places 2021/22 1.44 per place 364 first choices 253 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 329 first choices 257 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 312 first choices 254 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 298 first choices 254 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 281 first choices 256 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 260 first choices 256 places
First preferences per place at Wood Green Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 260 first preferences for 256 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wood Green Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 255 311 206 1.22
2016/17 254 305 210 1.2
2017/18 251 351 220 1.4
2018/19 243 381 212 1.57
2019/20 259 365 220 1.41
2020/21 255 343 237 1.35
2021/22 253 364 235 1.44
2022/23 257 329 242 1.28
2023/24 254 312 238 1.23
2024/25 254 298 238 1.17
2025/26 256 281 237 1.1
2026/27 256 260 232 1.02

Places offered

256

in 2026/27

Named first choice

260

643 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.2%

232 of 260

Offers to families outside the council

29%

74 of 256 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

1,280

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,293

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Wood Green 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 Wood Green 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wood Green Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,465 places 1,467 on roll 2011/12 1,470 places 1,472 on roll 2012/13 1,470 places 1,477 on roll 2013/14 1,530 places 1,499 on roll 2014/15 1,530 places 1,471 on roll 2015/16 1,530 places 1,466 on roll 2016/17 1,530 places 1,483 on roll 2017/18 1,530 places 1,483 on roll 2018/19 1,530 places 1,475 on roll 2020/21 1,530 places 1,504 on roll 2021/22 1,530 places 1,542 on roll 2022/23 1,530 places 1,534 on roll 2023/24 1,530 places 1,535 on roll 2024/25 1,530 places 1,516 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sandwell

Postcode WS10 9QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136616).

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.