School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Excel Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 44 families who named The Excel Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 238 and 271 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.

1.14

first choices for every place available

271 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Excel Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Excel 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

The Excel Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 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 The Excel 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 0.95 per place 178 first choices 188 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 218 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 218 first choices 204 places 2018/19 1.44 per place 298 first choices 207 places 2019/20 1.49 per place 306 first choices 206 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 298 first choices 232 places 2021/22 1.36 per place 322 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.38 per place 328 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.41 per place 332 first choices 236 places 2024/25 1.34 per place 318 first choices 237 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 310 first choices 233 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 271 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at The Excel Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 271 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Excel Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 188 178 178 0.95
2016/17 238 218 218 0.92
2017/18 204 218 191 1.07
2018/19 207 298 192 1.44
2019/20 206 306 200 1.49
2020/21 232 298 225 1.28
2021/22 237 322 236 1.36
2022/23 238 328 233 1.38
2023/24 236 332 232 1.41
2024/25 237 318 230 1.34
2025/26 233 310 227 1.33
2026/27 238 271 227 1.14

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

271

540 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

227 of 271

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 238 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

1,199

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 Excel 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 Excel Academy reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Excel Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 790 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 778 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 800 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 883 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 951 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,027 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,085 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,112 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,147 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,196 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,199 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stoke-on-Trent

Postcode ST1 6LG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140633).

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.