School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Charlton School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Charlton School as their first choice did not get a place: 230 put it first and 207 of them were offered one.

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

23

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

230 first preferences for 234 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Charlton School

There is no published appeal success rate for Charlton School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Telford and Wrekin 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 Telford and Wrekin, 24.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 359 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 Telford and Wrekin.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Telford and Wrekin 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

Charlton School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Charlton School, 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 0.91 per place 218 first choices 239 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 191 first choices 202 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 186 first choices 230 places 2018/19 0.69 per place 160 first choices 231 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 150 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 184 first choices 231 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 153 first choices 234 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 159 first choices 192 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 190 first choices 238 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 207 first choices 231 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 222 first choices 228 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 230 first choices 234 places
First preferences per place at Charlton School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 230 first preferences for 234 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Charlton School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 218 212 0.91
2016/17 202 191 189 0.95
2017/18 230 186 185 0.81
2018/19 231 160 160 0.69
2019/20 178 150 148 0.84
2020/21 231 184 184 0.8
2021/22 234 153 153 0.65
2022/23 192 159 159 0.83
2023/24 238 190 178 0.8
2024/25 231 207 192 0.9
2025/26 228 222 195 0.97
2026/27 234 230 207 0.98

Places offered

234

in 2026/27

Named first choice

230

607 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90%

207 of 230

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 234 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 123597.

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

1,210

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,225

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

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 Charlton School 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 Charlton School 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 Charlton School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,175 places 1,170 on roll 2010/11 1,175 places 1,170 on roll 2011/12 1,175 places 1,166 on roll 2012/13 1,175 places 1,162 on roll 2013/14 1,175 places 1,153 on roll 2014/15 1,175 places 1,146 on roll 2015/16 1,175 places 1,152 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,108 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,128 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,133 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,160 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,201 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,227 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,243 on roll 2024/25 1,210 places 1,225 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
Telford and Wrekin

Postcode TF1 3FA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142821).

Other contested secondary schools in Telford and Wrekin

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.