School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Southmoor Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Southmoor Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 238 and 237 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

237 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Southmoor Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Southmoor 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 Sunderland 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 Sunderland, 77.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 189 of 244 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 Sunderland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sunderland 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

Southmoor 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 Southmoor 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 per place 207 first choices 208 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 181 first choices 183 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 233 first choices 211 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 238 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 250 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 266 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 247 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 257 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 269 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 259 first choices 236 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 272 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1 per place 237 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at Southmoor Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 237 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Southmoor Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 207 207 1
2016/17 183 181 181 0.99
2017/18 211 233 206 1.1
2018/19 240 238 233 0.99
2019/20 240 250 234 1.04
2020/21 239 266 227 1.11
2021/22 240 247 235 1.03
2022/23 239 257 238 1.08
2023/24 240 269 229 1.12
2024/25 236 259 236 1.1
2025/26 237 272 235 1.15
2026/27 238 237 222 1

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

237

409 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.7%

222 of 237

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 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

1,300

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,207

92.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

93

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

294

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 Southmoor 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 Southmoor Academy reported 93 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Southmoor Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,004 places 1,002 on roll 2012/13 1,399 places 981 on roll 2013/14 1,399 places 972 on roll 2014/15 1,399 places 1,055 on roll 2015/16 1,399 places 1,127 on roll 2016/17 1,399 places 1,154 on roll 2017/18 1,460 places 1,199 on roll 2018/19 1,264 places 1,272 on roll 2020/21 1,264 places 1,408 on roll 2021/22 1,264 places 1,434 on roll 2022/23 1,264 places 1,449 on roll 2023/24 1,410 places 1,411 on roll 2024/25 1,594 places 1,394 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
Sunderland

Postcode SR2 7TF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138103).

Other contested secondary schools in Sunderland

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.