School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Erasmus Darwin Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Erasmus Darwin Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 210 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

210 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Erasmus Darwin Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Erasmus Darwin Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Staffordshire 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 Staffordshire, 20.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 157 of 752 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 Staffordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Staffordshire 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

Erasmus Darwin Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 Erasmus Darwin Academy, 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 1.07 per place 192 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 182 first choices 181 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 215 first choices 185 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 208 first choices 184 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 269 first choices 182 places 2020/21 1.39 per place 252 first choices 181 places 2021/22 1.55 per place 283 first choices 182 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 217 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.33 per place 240 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 260 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 206 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 210 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at Erasmus Darwin Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Erasmus Darwin Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 192 178 1.07
2016/17 181 182 174 1.01
2017/18 185 215 176 1.16
2018/19 184 208 177 1.13
2019/20 182 269 181 1.48
2020/21 181 252 178 1.39
2021/22 182 283 180 1.55
2022/23 179 217 176 1.21
2023/24 180 240 175 1.33
2024/25 181 260 180 1.44
2025/26 180 206 177 1.14
2026/27 192 210 185 1.09

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

448 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.1%

185 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

11%

22 of 192 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

935

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

reported as full or beyond

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 Erasmus Darwin Academy 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 Erasmus Darwin Academy 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Erasmus Darwin Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,100 places 900 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 891 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 919 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 905 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 935 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 978 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,021 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,038 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,107 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,137 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,137 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,124 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 1,124 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
Staffordshire

Postcode WS7 3QW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136886).

Other contested secondary schools in Staffordshire

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.