School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VII School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 42 families who named King Edward VII School as their first choice did not get a place: 204 put it first and 162 of them were offered one.

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

42

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

204 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VII School

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VII School, 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

King Edward VII School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 King Edward VII School, 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 0.87 per place 199 first choices 229 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 203 first choices 230 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 194 first choices 230 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 233 first choices 238 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 203 first choices 238 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 210 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 205 first choices 234 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 192 first choices 228 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 226 first choices 238 places 2024/25 0.81 per place 194 first choices 240 places 2025/26 0.75 per place 173 first choices 230 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 204 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VII School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 204 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VII School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 229 199 177 0.87
2016/17 230 203 165 0.88
2017/18 230 194 152 0.84
2018/19 238 233 191 0.98
2019/20 238 203 174 0.85
2020/21 238 210 184 0.88
2021/22 234 205 168 0.88
2022/23 228 192 161 0.84
2023/24 238 226 187 0.95
2024/25 240 194 180 0.81
2025/26 230 173 166 0.75
2026/27 240 204 162 0.85

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

204

793 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

162 of 204

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 240 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,172

86.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

178

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

548

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 King Edward VII School 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 King Edward VII School reported 178 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.8% 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 King Edward VII School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,649 places 1,667 on roll 2010/11 1,649 places 1,707 on roll 2011/12 1,649 places 1,670 on roll 2012/13 1,649 places 1,708 on roll 2013/14 1,649 places 1,745 on roll 2014/15 1,649 places 1,703 on roll 2015/16 1,649 places 1,626 on roll 2016/17 1,649 places 1,620 on roll 2017/18 1,649 places 1,673 on roll 2018/19 1,698 places 1,752 on roll 2020/21 1,698 places 1,720 on roll 2021/22 1,698 places 1,760 on roll 2022/23 1,698 places 1,789 on roll 2023/24 1,698 places 1,737 on roll 2024/25 1,898 places 1,709 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sheffield

Postcode S10 2PW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 107140).

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.