School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trentham Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 45 families who named Trentham Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 182 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.

1.25

first choices for every place available

182 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trentham Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Trentham 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

Trentham Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Trentham 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 0.78 per place 98 first choices 126 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 124 first choices 156 places 2017/18 0.83 per place 113 first choices 136 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 124 first choices 144 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 138 first choices 163 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 109 first choices 148 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 136 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 153 first choices 164 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 165 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 181 first choices 146 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 162 first choices 154 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 182 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Trentham Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 182 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trentham Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 126 98 98 0.78
2016/17 156 124 124 0.79
2017/18 136 113 113 0.83
2018/19 144 124 124 0.86
2019/20 163 138 138 0.85
2020/21 148 109 109 0.74
2021/22 150 136 135 0.91
2022/23 164 153 147 0.93
2023/24 148 165 136 1.11
2024/25 146 181 140 1.24
2025/26 154 162 142 1.05
2026/27 146 182 137 1.25

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

182

483 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.3%

137 of 182

Offers to families outside the council

12%

18 of 146 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 124388.

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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

785

104.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

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 Trentham 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 Trentham 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Trentham Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 748 places 618 on roll 2010/11 750 places 668 on roll 2011/12 750 places 715 on roll 2012/13 750 places 750 on roll 2013/14 750 places 733 on roll 2014/15 750 places 712 on roll 2015/16 750 places 707 on roll 2016/17 750 places 696 on roll 2017/18 750 places 686 on roll 2018/19 750 places 681 on roll 2020/21 750 places 724 on roll 2021/22 750 places 717 on roll 2022/23 750 places 763 on roll 2023/24 750 places 785 on roll 2024/25 750 places 785 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 ST4 8PQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144558).

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.