School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bloxwich Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Bloxwich Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 139 put it first and 135 of them were offered one.

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

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

139 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bloxwich Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bloxwich 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 Walsall 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 Walsall, 17.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 182 of 1,059 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 Walsall.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Walsall 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

Bloxwich Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Bloxwich 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 0.62 per place 60 first choices 96 places 2016/17 0.56 per place 53 first choices 94 places 2017/18 0.48 per place 67 first choices 140 places 2018/19 0.57 per place 84 first choices 147 places 2019/20 0.56 per place 99 first choices 177 places 2020/21 0.53 per place 127 first choices 241 places 2021/22 0.55 per place 141 first choices 256 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 193 first choices 219 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 204 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 190 first choices 178 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 144 first choices 176 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 139 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Bloxwich Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 139 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bloxwich 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 96 60 59 0.62
2016/17 94 53 53 0.56
2017/18 140 67 67 0.48
2018/19 147 84 84 0.57
2019/20 177 99 99 0.56
2020/21 241 127 126 0.53
2021/22 256 141 141 0.55
2022/23 219 193 192 0.88
2023/24 177 204 160 1.15
2024/25 178 190 156 1.07
2025/26 176 144 128 0.82
2026/27 180 139 135 0.77

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

139

321 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.1%

135 of 139

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 180 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,367

103.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

47

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

128

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 Bloxwich 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 Bloxwich 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bloxwich 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 1,448 places 1,237 on roll 2012/13 1,448 places 1,182 on roll 2013/14 1,448 places 1,138 on roll 2014/15 1,448 places 1,078 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 979 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 968 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 1,026 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 1,065 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,309 on roll 2021/22 1,448 places 1,453 on roll 2022/23 1,448 places 1,515 on roll 2023/24 1,448 places 1,522 on roll 2024/25 1,448 places 1,392 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
Walsall

Postcode WS2 7NR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137274).

Other contested secondary schools in Walsall

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.