School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Madeley Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 243 families who named Madeley Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 411 put it first.

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

2.39

first choices for every place available

411 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Madeley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Madeley 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

Madeley Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Madeley Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.43 per place 258 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.52 per place 273 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.57 per place 283 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.89 per place 336 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.84 per place 323 first choices 176 places 2020/21 2.02 per place 351 first choices 174 places 2021/22 1.79 per place 319 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.9 per place 340 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.85 per place 328 first choices 177 places 2024/25 2.09 per place 360 first choices 172 places 2025/26 2.46 per place 428 first choices 174 places 2026/27 2.39 per place 411 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Madeley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 411 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Madeley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 258 175 1.43
2016/17 180 273 178 1.52
2017/18 180 283 174 1.57
2018/19 178 336 164 1.89
2019/20 176 323 160 1.84
2020/21 174 351 164 2.02
2021/22 178 319 165 1.79
2022/23 179 340 173 1.9
2023/24 177 328 171 1.85
2024/25 172 360 168 2.09
2025/26 174 428 171 2.46
2026/27 172 411 168 2.39

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

411

839 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

40.9%

168 of 411

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 172 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

1,171

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

961

82.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

210

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Madeley 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 Madeley Academy reported 210 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Madeley Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 830 on roll 2010/11 1,100 places 865 on roll 2011/12 1,100 places 992 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,057 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,066 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,089 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,104 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,066 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,050 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,115 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,235 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,241 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,223 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,267 on roll 2024/25 1,371 places 1,276 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Madeley Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Madeley Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
31 August 2017 No fault found ADA3323

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 TF7 5FB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135149).

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.