School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Mary Webb School and Science College?

In 2026/27, Mary Webb School and Science College offered 115 places and 105 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.91

first choices for every place available

105 first preferences for 115 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Mary Webb School and Science College

There is no published appeal success rate for Mary Webb School and Science College, 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

Mary Webb School and Science College turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Mary Webb School and Science College, 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 0.95 per place 80 first choices 84 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 93 first choices 110 places 2017/18 1 per place 101 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 111 first choices 118 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 109 first choices 116 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 129 first choices 119 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 103 first choices 115 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 125 first choices 134 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 127 first choices 126 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 122 first choices 120 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 117 first choices 124 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 105 first choices 115 places
First preferences per place at Mary Webb School and Science College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 105 first preferences for 115 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Mary Webb School and Science College, 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 84 80 80 0.95
2016/17 110 93 93 0.85
2017/18 101 101 101 1
2018/19 118 111 111 0.94
2019/20 116 109 109 0.94
2020/21 119 129 115 1.08
2021/22 115 103 103 0.9
2022/23 134 125 125 0.93
2023/24 126 127 121 1.01
2024/25 120 122 116 1.02
2025/26 124 117 117 0.94
2026/27 115 105 105 0.91

Places offered

115

in 2026/27

Named first choice

105

307 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

105 of 105

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 115 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 123577.

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

604

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

653

108.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

49

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 Mary Webb School and Science College 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 Mary Webb School and Science College 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 Mary Webb School and Science College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 604 places 571 on roll 2010/11 604 places 557 on roll 2011/12 604 places 537 on roll 2012/13 604 places 506 on roll 2013/14 604 places 486 on roll 2014/15 604 places 485 on roll 2015/16 604 places 502 on roll 2016/17 604 places 521 on roll 2017/18 604 places 558 on roll 2018/19 604 places 574 on roll 2020/21 604 places 604 on roll 2021/22 604 places 611 on roll 2022/23 604 places 621 on roll 2023/24 604 places 649 on roll 2024/25 604 places 653 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 SY5 0TG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146509).

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.