School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Madeley High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Madeley High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 159 and 181 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 159 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Madeley High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Madeley High 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

Madeley High 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 Madeley High 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 1.04 per place 138 first choices 133 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 120 first choices 133 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 108 first choices 120 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 142 first choices 149 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 124 first choices 134 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 131 first choices 145 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 130 first choices 139 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 182 first choices 168 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 181 first choices 152 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 192 first choices 167 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 171 first choices 155 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 181 first choices 159 places
First preferences per place at Madeley High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 159 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Madeley High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 133 138 127 1.04
2016/17 133 120 120 0.9
2017/18 120 108 108 0.9
2018/19 149 142 142 0.95
2019/20 134 124 111 0.93
2020/21 145 131 131 0.9
2021/22 139 130 130 0.94
2022/23 168 182 163 1.08
2023/24 152 181 143 1.19
2024/25 167 192 162 1.15
2025/26 155 171 149 1.1
2026/27 159 181 150 1.14

Places offered

159

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

321 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.9%

150 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

6%

9 of 159 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

761

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

762

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Madeley High 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 Madeley High 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Madeley High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 675 places 624 on roll 2014/15 675 places 623 on roll 2015/16 675 places 641 on roll 2016/17 675 places 619 on roll 2017/18 675 places 609 on roll 2018/19 675 places 641 on roll 2020/21 675 places 649 on roll 2021/22 675 places 646 on roll 2022/23 675 places 703 on roll 2023/24 720 places 734 on roll 2024/25 761 places 762 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 CW3 9JJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140154).

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.