School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston Horizon Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Ormiston Horizon Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 212 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.

1.02

first choices for every place available

212 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston Horizon Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston Horizon 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 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

Ormiston Horizon Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Ormiston Horizon Academy, 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 0.99 per place 194 first choices 196 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 210 first choices 218 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 234 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 265 first choices 207 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 254 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 244 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 221 first choices 208 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 242 first choices 229 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 195 first choices 208 places 2024/25 1 per place 223 first choices 222 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 187 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 212 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston Horizon Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 212 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston Horizon Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 196 194 194 0.99
2016/17 218 210 210 0.96
2017/18 206 234 203 1.14
2018/19 207 265 206 1.28
2019/20 220 254 219 1.15
2020/21 208 244 204 1.17
2021/22 208 221 206 1.06
2022/23 229 242 226 1.06
2023/24 208 195 193 0.94
2024/25 222 223 211 1
2025/26 203 187 186 0.92
2026/27 208 212 200 1.02

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

212

377 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.3%

200 of 212

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 208 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,033

98.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

17

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 Ormiston Horizon 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 Ormiston Horizon Academy reported 17 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.4% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ormiston Horizon Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,050 places 551 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 542 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 602 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 664 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 779 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 902 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 971 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,000 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,050 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,050 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,042 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,033 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 6JZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136680).

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.