School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alderbrook School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named Alderbrook School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 267 and 289 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

289 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alderbrook School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alderbrook 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 Solihull 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 Solihull, 2.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 18 of 648 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 Solihull.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Solihull 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

Alderbrook School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 3 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 Alderbrook 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 per place 237 first choices 238 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 220 first choices 265 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 253 first choices 247 places 2018/19 1.03 per place 253 first choices 246 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 260 first choices 246 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 260 first choices 250 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 237 first choices 266 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 293 first choices 275 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 341 first choices 273 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 325 first choices 272 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 320 first choices 267 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 289 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at Alderbrook School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 289 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alderbrook School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 237 179 1
2016/17 265 220 185 0.83
2017/18 247 253 161 1.02
2018/19 246 253 171 1.03
2019/20 246 260 160 1.06
2020/21 250 260 159 1.04
2021/22 266 237 169 0.89
2022/23 275 293 165 1.07
2023/24 273 341 181 1.25
2024/25 272 325 203 1.19
2025/26 267 320 223 1.2
2026/27 267 289 223 1.08

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

289

1,499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.2%

223 of 289

Offers to families outside the council

3%

8 of 267 offers

How close you had to live

Alderbrook School filled its places in 2025, and 6,035m — 3.75 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the sibling (out of catchment) criterion.

Last place offered at

3.75 mi

6,035 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Sibling (Out of Catchment)

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

0.54–3.75 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at Alderbrook School, by admission year. Each year is a separate round with its own applicants, not a trend.
Year Distance Criterion the last place went under
2025 3.75 miles (6,035m) Sibling (Out of Catchment)
2024 0.54 miles (869m) Distance
2023 1.73 miles (2,784m) Sibling (Out of Catchment)

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also moves a great deal. Across the years published here it has ranged from 0.54 to 3.75 miles — a 6.9-fold spread — because it is set by who happened to apply that year, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Solihull Council, allocation statistics for 2023–2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,400

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,391

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Alderbrook 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 Alderbrook School reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Alderbrook School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,287 places 1,302 on roll 2012/13 1,287 places 1,290 on roll 2013/14 1,287 places 1,278 on roll 2014/15 1,287 places 1,254 on roll 2015/16 1,537 places 1,313 on roll 2016/17 1,305 places 1,377 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,407 on roll 2018/19 1,405 places 1,481 on roll 2020/21 1,405 places 1,502 on roll 2021/22 1,405 places 1,531 on roll 2022/23 1,405 places 1,591 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,635 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,655 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
Solihull

Postcode B91 1SN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136994).

Other contested secondary schools in Solihull

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.