School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy?

In 2026/27, Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy offered 233 places and 208 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.89

first choices for every place available

208 first preferences for 233 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews 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 Sir Stanley Matthews Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Sir Stanley Matthews 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 1.29 per place 322 first choices 250 places 2016/17 1.47 per place 305 first choices 208 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 249 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 265 first choices 207 places 2019/20 1.53 per place 316 first choices 206 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 277 first choices 237 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 238 first choices 232 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 285 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 281 first choices 237 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 254 first choices 232 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 244 first choices 231 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 208 first choices 233 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 208 first preferences for 233 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 250 322 245 1.29
2016/17 208 305 205 1.47
2017/18 209 249 202 1.19
2018/19 207 265 203 1.28
2019/20 206 316 200 1.53
2020/21 237 277 228 1.17
2021/22 232 238 224 1.03
2022/23 238 285 231 1.2
2023/24 237 281 231 1.19
2024/25 232 254 216 1.09
2025/26 231 244 222 1.06
2026/27 233 208 208 0.89

Places offered

233

in 2026/27

Named first choice

208

426 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

208 of 208

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 233 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,185

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

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 Sir Stanley Matthews 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 Sir Stanley Matthews Academy reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,050 places 698 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 685 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 718 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 754 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 837 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 987 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,049 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,082 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,083 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,102 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,127 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,159 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,190 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,185 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 ST3 3JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136145).

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.