School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thistley Hough Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named Thistley Hough Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 211 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.

1.01

first choices for every place available

211 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thistley Hough Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Thistley Hough 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

Thistley Hough Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Thistley Hough 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 0.72 per place 98 first choices 137 places 2016/17 0.81 per place 111 first choices 137 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 167 first choices 197 places 2018/19 0.79 per place 155 first choices 197 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 213 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 192 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 196 first choices 208 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 202 first choices 235 places 2023/24 0.82 per place 165 first choices 202 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 187 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 232 first choices 210 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 211 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at Thistley Hough Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 211 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thistley Hough Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 137 98 98 0.72
2016/17 137 111 111 0.81
2017/18 197 167 167 0.85
2018/19 197 155 155 0.79
2019/20 210 213 194 1.01
2020/21 207 192 179 0.93
2021/22 208 196 186 0.94
2022/23 235 202 202 0.86
2023/24 202 165 165 0.82
2024/25 206 187 170 0.91
2025/26 210 232 199 1.1
2026/27 208 211 174 1.01

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

211

390 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.5%

174 of 211

Offers to families outside the council

6%

13 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

1,091

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

41

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 Thistley Hough 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 Thistley Hough Academy 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thistley Hough Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 698 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 644 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 652 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 640 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 716 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 811 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 960 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 995 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,066 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,085 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,091 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 ST4 5JJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139068).

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.