Refused a place at Rugeley John Taylor?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Rugeley John Taylor as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 195 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Staffordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 1 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
195 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Rugeley John Taylor
There is no published appeal success rate for Rugeley John Taylor, 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.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Rugeley John Taylor turned first-choice families away in its first and only year of published figures. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.
Only one year of published figures exist for this school, so there is nothing to plot yet. The figures themselves are below.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026/27 | 174 | 195 | 171 | 1.12 |
Places offered
174
in 2026/27
Named first choice
195
342 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
87.7%
171 of 195
Offers to families outside the council
1%
1 of 174 offers
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Staffordshire does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Free schools
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Staffordshire
Postcode WS15 1FY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151701).
Other contested secondary schools in Staffordshire
- Blessed Robert Sutton Catholic Voluntary Academy 1.54 first choices per place
- Landau Forte Academy, QEMS 1.33 first choices per place
- The Friary School 1.24 first choices per place
- Madeley High School 1.14 first choices per place
- Blessed William Howard Catholic School 1.13 first choices per place
- Kingsmead School 1.12 first choices per place
- Chesterton Community Sports College 1.11 first choices per place
- Endon High School 1.11 first choices per place
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.