School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ercall Wood Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Ercall Wood Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 171 put it first and 154 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.

17

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

171 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ercall Wood Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ercall Wood 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 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

Ercall Wood Academy 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 Ercall Wood 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 0.85 per place 130 first choices 153 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 138 first choices 174 places 2017/18 0.78 per place 138 first choices 177 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 154 first choices 172 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 131 first choices 171 places 2020/21 0.77 per place 137 first choices 177 places 2021/22 0.75 per place 143 first choices 191 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 159 first choices 187 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 164 first choices 187 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 160 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.73 per place 150 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 171 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at Ercall Wood Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ercall Wood Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 153 130 123 0.85
2016/17 174 138 138 0.79
2017/18 177 138 135 0.78
2018/19 172 154 137 0.9
2019/20 171 131 131 0.77
2020/21 177 137 137 0.77
2021/22 191 143 143 0.75
2022/23 187 159 157 0.85
2023/24 187 164 150 0.88
2024/25 175 160 144 0.91
2025/26 205 150 147 0.73
2026/27 200 171 154 0.85

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

505 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.1%

154 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 197 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 123595.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

941

104.6% 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 Ercall Wood 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 Ercall Wood 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 Ercall Wood Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 753 on roll 2010/11 900 places 712 on roll 2011/12 900 places 675 on roll 2012/13 900 places 605 on roll 2013/14 900 places 575 on roll 2014/15 900 places 594 on roll 2015/16 900 places 621 on roll 2016/17 900 places 714 on roll 2017/18 900 places 760 on roll 2018/19 900 places 834 on roll 2020/21 900 places 901 on roll 2021/22 900 places 925 on roll 2022/23 900 places 951 on roll 2023/24 900 places 940 on roll 2024/25 900 places 941 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
Telford and Wrekin

Postcode TF1 2DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145707).

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.