School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kinver High School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Kinver High School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 148 and 155 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Staffordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.05

first choices for every place available

155 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kinver High School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Kinver High School and Sixth Form, 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

Kinver High School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Kinver High School and Sixth Form, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.86 per place 82 first choices 95 places 2017/18 0.89 per place 116 first choices 130 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 89 first choices 108 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 119 first choices 117 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 93 first choices 102 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 118 first choices 130 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 142 first choices 143 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 181 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 166 first choices 162 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 200 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 155 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at Kinver High School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 155 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kinver High School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 95 82 82 0.86
2017/18 130 116 115 0.89
2018/19 108 89 89 0.82
2019/20 117 119 103 1.02
2020/21 102 93 93 0.91
2021/22 130 118 118 0.91
2022/23 143 142 131 0.99
2023/24 148 181 138 1.22
2024/25 162 166 142 1.02
2025/26 144 200 128 1.39
2026/27 148 155 134 1.05

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

155

425 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.5%

134 of 155

Offers to families outside the council

57%

85 of 148 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Kinver High School and Sixth Form published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Kinver High School and Sixth Form, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 First priority for admission shall be given to looked after children or children who were previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, residence, or special guardianship order; The school may request supporting documentary evidence for Looked after or previously looked after children which may include a letter from the child’s social worker confirming their current status or a copy of the adoption order, child arrangements order or special guardianship order and a letter from the local authority that last looked after the child, confirming that they were looked after immediately prior to that order being made, or such evidence that […] criterion continues in the source document
2 Second priority for admission shall be given to children who satisfy both of the following tests: Test 1: the child is distinguished from the great majority of applicants either on their own medical grounds or by other exceptional circumstances. Medical grounds must be supported by a medical report (obtained by the applicant and provided at the point of application). This report must clearly justify, for health reasons only, why it is better for the child’s health to attend the School rather than any other school. Exceptional circumstances must relate to the School and the individual child, i.e. the circumstances of the child, not the economic or social circumstances of the parent/carer. […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Third priority for admission shall be given to children who have a sibling who will still be attending Kinver High School in September 2026;
4 Fourth priority for admission shall be given to children of any member of staff in either or both of the following circumstances:
5 where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made; and/or ii. the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post at the school for which they are based for more than 50% of their time for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. For inclusion in this category, the staff member will be employed by the Trust on a full or part-time basis, on a permanent contract and not on a contract for services. They must be permanently based at Kinver High School for more than 50% of their normal working hours each week during term time and will include teaching and non-teaching staff. […] criterion continues in the source document
6 Fifth priority for admission shall be given to children whose home address is within the catchment area of the school, which can be viewed here;
7 Sixth priority for admission shall be given to other children not falling into the categories above

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Kinver High School and Sixth Form's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

787

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

709

90.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

78

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

59

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 Kinver High School and Sixth Form 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 Kinver High School and Sixth Form reported 78 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.1% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kinver High School and Sixth Form from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 674 places 594 on roll 2015/16 674 places 572 on roll 2016/17 689 places 537 on roll 2017/18 689 places 571 on roll 2018/19 689 places 580 on roll 2020/21 689 places 612 on roll 2021/22 689 places 669 on roll 2022/23 689 places 690 on roll 2023/24 689 places 719 on roll 2024/25 846 places 729 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Staffordshire

Postcode DY7 6AA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141342).

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.