School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Forge Valley School & Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Forge Valley School & Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 268 and 274 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

274 first preferences for 268 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Forge Valley School & Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Forge Valley School & Sixth Form, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Sheffield 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 Sheffield, 26.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 181 of 672 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 Sheffield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sheffield 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

Forge Valley School & Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Forge Valley School & Sixth Form, 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 0.78 per place 185 first choices 237 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 183 first choices 232 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 224 first choices 240 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 221 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 253 first choices 239 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 249 first choices 254 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 250 first choices 242 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 233 first choices 254 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 321 first choices 256 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 284 first choices 269 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 278 first choices 239 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 274 first choices 268 places
First preferences per place at Forge Valley School & Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 274 first preferences for 268 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Forge Valley School & Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 237 185 185 0.78
2016/17 232 183 183 0.79
2017/18 240 224 220 0.93
2018/19 240 221 216 0.92
2019/20 239 253 228 1.06
2020/21 254 249 249 0.98
2021/22 242 250 228 1.03
2022/23 254 233 232 0.92
2023/24 256 321 249 1.25
2024/25 269 284 266 1.06
2025/26 239 278 233 1.16
2026/27 268 274 259 1.02

Places offered

268

in 2026/27

Named first choice

274

541 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.5%

259 of 274

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 268 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

1,341

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,275

95.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

210

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 Forge Valley School & Sixth Form 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 Forge Valley School & Sixth Form reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.1% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Forge Valley School & Sixth Form from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,350 places 1,113 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,154 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,194 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,241 on roll 2018/19 1,380 places 1,265 on roll 2020/21 1,380 places 1,366 on roll 2021/22 1,380 places 1,436 on roll 2022/23 1,380 places 1,481 on roll 2023/24 1,380 places 1,501 on roll 2024/25 1,551 places 1,525 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
Sheffield

Postcode S6 5HG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140547).

Other contested secondary schools in Sheffield

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.