School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Belvidere School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Belvidere School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 168 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

168 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Belvidere School

There is no published appeal success rate for Belvidere 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 Shropshire 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 Shropshire, 26.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 70 of 266 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 Shropshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Shropshire 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

Belvidere School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Belvidere 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 1.12 per place 184 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 199 first choices 160 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 166 first choices 163 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 224 first choices 162 places 2019/20 1.38 per place 227 first choices 164 places 2020/21 1.27 per place 203 first choices 160 places 2021/22 1.37 per place 225 first choices 164 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 185 first choices 163 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 195 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 171 first choices 168 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 151 first choices 168 places 2026/27 1 per place 168 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Belvidere School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Belvidere School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 165 184 159 1.12
2016/17 160 199 153 1.24
2017/18 163 166 155 1.02
2018/19 162 224 156 1.38
2019/20 164 227 157 1.38
2020/21 160 203 151 1.27
2021/22 164 225 158 1.37
2022/23 163 185 156 1.13
2023/24 178 195 159 1.1
2024/25 168 171 158 1.02
2025/26 168 151 149 0.9
2026/27 168 168 150 1

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

467 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.3%

150 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 123570.

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

840

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

840

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Belvidere 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 Belvidere 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Belvidere School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 840 places 826 on roll 2010/11 840 places 829 on roll 2011/12 840 places 832 on roll 2012/13 840 places 801 on roll 2013/14 840 places 806 on roll 2014/15 840 places 811 on roll 2015/16 840 places 818 on roll 2016/17 840 places 813 on roll 2017/18 840 places 835 on roll 2018/19 840 places 839 on roll 2020/21 840 places 830 on roll 2021/22 840 places 822 on roll 2022/23 840 places 827 on roll 2023/24 840 places 851 on roll 2024/25 840 places 840 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
Shropshire

Postcode SY2 5RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146506).

Other contested secondary schools in Shropshire

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.