School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Light Hall School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Light Hall School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 194 and 197 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

197 first preferences for 194 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Light Hall School

There is no published appeal success rate for Light Hall 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

Light Hall School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 5 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 Light Hall 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 0.73 per place 183 first choices 249 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 228 first choices 248 places 2017/18 0.69 per place 166 first choices 239 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 187 first choices 247 places 2019/20 0.57 per place 132 first choices 231 places 2020/21 0.53 per place 131 first choices 248 places 2021/22 0.59 per place 127 first choices 215 places 2022/23 0.66 per place 117 first choices 177 places 2023/24 0.78 per place 146 first choices 186 places 2024/25 0.7 per place 120 first choices 172 places 2025/26 0.75 per place 136 first choices 181 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 197 first choices 194 places
First preferences per place at Light Hall School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 194 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Light Hall School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 249 183 169 0.73
2016/17 248 228 204 0.92
2017/18 239 166 148 0.69
2018/19 247 187 167 0.76
2019/20 231 132 126 0.57
2020/21 248 131 130 0.53
2021/22 215 127 127 0.59
2022/23 177 117 92 0.66
2023/24 186 146 108 0.78
2024/25 172 120 114 0.7
2025/26 181 136 130 0.75
2026/27 194 197 161 1.02

Places offered

194

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

672 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.7%

161 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

9%

17 of 194 offers

How close you had to live

Light Hall School filled its places in 2025, and 2,124m — 1.32 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the distance criterion.

Last place offered at

1.32 mi

2,124 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

Range across years with a cut-off

1.14–1.39 mi

3 years, 2023 to 2025

The last place offered at Light Hall 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 1.32 miles (2,124m) Distance
2024 1.14 miles (1,835m) Distance
2023 1.39 miles (2,237m) 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 changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

990

94.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

60

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Light Hall 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 Light Hall School reported 60 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.3% 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 Light Hall School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,250 places 1,217 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 1,206 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 1,173 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,171 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,169 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,179 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,165 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,181 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,195 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,126 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,095 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,058 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,029 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 B90 2PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137231).

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.