School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named King Edward VI School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 253 and 260 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

260 first preferences for 253 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI School

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI 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 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

King Edward VI School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 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 King Edward VI 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 0.87 per place 183 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 217 first choices 212 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 219 first choices 214 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 211 first choices 213 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 223 first choices 249 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 236 first choices 250 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 231 first choices 244 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 288 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 309 first choices 246 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 260 first choices 247 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 240 first choices 245 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 260 first choices 253 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 260 first preferences for 253 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 183 180 0.87
2016/17 212 217 196 1.02
2017/18 214 219 199 1.02
2018/19 213 211 188 0.99
2019/20 249 223 219 0.9
2020/21 250 236 222 0.94
2021/22 244 231 218 0.95
2022/23 264 288 244 1.09
2023/24 246 309 222 1.26
2024/25 247 260 225 1.05
2025/26 245 240 221 0.98
2026/27 253 260 232 1.03

Places offered

253

in 2026/27

Named first choice

260

634 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.2%

232 of 260

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 253 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

1,226

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,260

102.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

451

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 King Edward VI 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 King Edward VI 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 King Edward VI School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,393 places 1,399 on roll 2010/11 1,395 places 1,400 on roll 2011/12 1,395 places 1,419 on roll 2012/13 1,412 places 1,397 on roll 2013/14 1,391 places 1,347 on roll 2014/15 1,395 places 1,397 on roll 2015/16 1,410 places 1,366 on roll 2016/17 1,391 places 1,356 on roll 2017/18 1,397 places 1,387 on roll 2018/19 1,395 places 1,375 on roll 2020/21 1,630 places 1,497 on roll 2021/22 1,663 places 1,547 on roll 2022/23 1,663 places 1,603 on roll 2023/24 1,663 places 1,626 on roll 2024/25 1,677 places 1,626 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Staffordshire

Postcode WS14 9EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 124408).

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.