School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 264 and 272 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

272 first preferences for 264 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent

There is no published appeal success rate for Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Stoke-on-Trent 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 Stoke-on-Trent, 21% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 98 of 466 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 Stoke-on-Trent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stoke-on-Trent 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

Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent, 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 0.92 per place 147 first choices 159 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 178 first choices 199 places 2017/18 0.75 per place 131 first choices 175 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 176 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 230 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 238 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 221 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 239 first choices 264 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 246 first choices 264 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 257 first choices 265 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 289 first choices 259 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 272 first choices 264 places
First preferences per place at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 272 first preferences for 264 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 159 147 147 0.92
2016/17 199 178 178 0.89
2017/18 175 131 131 0.75
2018/19 208 176 176 0.85
2019/20 208 230 200 1.11
2020/21 208 238 197 1.14
2021/22 205 221 200 1.08
2022/23 264 239 239 0.91
2023/24 264 246 246 0.93
2024/25 265 257 238 0.97
2025/26 259 289 239 1.12
2026/27 264 272 239 1.03

Places offered

264

in 2026/27

Named first choice

272

477 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.9%

239 of 272

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 264 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

1,170

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,243

106.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

73

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 Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent 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 Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Co-op Academy Stoke-On-Trent from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,050 places 637 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 636 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 657 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 681 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 711 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 736 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 773 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 829 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 912 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,016 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,004 on roll 2022/23 1,110 places 1,123 on roll 2023/24 1,170 places 1,173 on roll 2024/25 1,170 places 1,243 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
Stoke-on-Trent

Postcode ST6 4LD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136102).

Other contested secondary schools in Stoke-on-Trent

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.