School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Orme Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named The Orme Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 152 put it first and 151 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

152 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Orme Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Orme 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

The Orme Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 The Orme Academy, 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 0.94 per place 174 first choices 186 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 125 first choices 138 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 135 first choices 153 places 2019/20 0.54 per place 122 first choices 225 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 124 first choices 160 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 117 first choices 136 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 181 first choices 155 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 151 first choices 162 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 186 first choices 165 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 196 first choices 167 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 152 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at The Orme Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 152 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Orme Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 186 174 174 0.94
2017/18 138 125 125 0.91
2018/19 153 135 135 0.88
2019/20 225 122 122 0.54
2020/21 160 124 124 0.78
2021/22 136 117 117 0.86
2022/23 155 181 149 1.17
2023/24 162 151 151 0.93
2024/25 165 186 161 1.13
2025/26 167 196 159 1.17
2026/27 169 152 151 0.9

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

152

299 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

151 of 152

Offers to families outside the council

6%

10 of 169 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

1,161

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

758

65.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

403

across Years 7 to 11

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 The Orme 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 The Orme Academy reported 403 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 65.3% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Orme Academy from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,160 places 826 on roll 2016/17 1,161 places 828 on roll 2017/18 1,161 places 789 on roll 2018/19 1,161 places 822 on roll 2020/21 1,161 places 756 on roll 2021/22 1,161 places 719 on roll 2022/23 1,161 places 752 on roll 2023/24 1,161 places 743 on roll 2024/25 1,161 places 758 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 ST5 9JU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142015).

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.