School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Mercia School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 198 families who named Mercia School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 194 and 385 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Sheffield actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.98

first choices for every place available

385 first preferences for 194 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Mercia School

There is no published appeal success rate for Mercia 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

Mercia School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 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 Mercia School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 1.36 per place 162 first choices 119 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 230 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.43 per place 246 first choices 172 places 2022/23 1.57 per place 285 first choices 181 places 2023/24 1.59 per place 287 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.83 per place 347 first choices 190 places 2025/26 2 per place 358 first choices 179 places 2026/27 1.98 per place 385 first choices 194 places
First preferences per place at Mercia School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 385 first preferences for 194 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Mercia School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 119 162 115 1.36
2020/21 180 230 168 1.28
2021/22 172 246 163 1.43
2022/23 181 285 164 1.57
2023/24 180 287 180 1.59
2024/25 190 347 188 1.83
2025/26 179 358 176 2
2026/27 194 385 187 1.98

Places offered

194

in 2026/27

Named first choice

385

1,060 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.6%

187 of 385

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 194 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

917

101.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

17

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Mercia 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 Mercia School 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Mercia School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,200 places 123 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 428 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 607 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 782 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 916 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,044 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sheffield

Postcode S7 2DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145897).

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.