School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blue Coat Church of England Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Blue Coat Church of England Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 130 put it first and 119 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.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

130 first preferences for 154 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blue Coat Church of England Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Blue Coat Church of England 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

Blue Coat Church of England Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Blue Coat Church of England 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 0.5 per place 53 first choices 105 places 2016/17 0.6 per place 84 first choices 141 places 2017/18 0.6 per place 90 first choices 150 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 100 first choices 156 places 2019/20 0.66 per place 95 first choices 144 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 126 first choices 159 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 124 first choices 144 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 136 first choices 158 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 134 first choices 153 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 151 first choices 156 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 148 first choices 149 places 2026/27 0.84 per place 130 first choices 154 places
First preferences per place at Blue Coat Church of England Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 130 first preferences for 154 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blue Coat Church of England Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 105 53 51 0.5
2016/17 141 84 84 0.6
2017/18 150 90 84 0.6
2018/19 156 100 100 0.64
2019/20 144 95 95 0.66
2020/21 159 126 108 0.79
2021/22 144 124 111 0.86
2022/23 158 136 123 0.86
2023/24 153 134 117 0.88
2024/25 156 151 126 0.97
2025/26 149 148 115 0.99
2026/27 154 130 119 0.84

Places offered

154

in 2026/27

Named first choice

130

372 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.5%

119 of 130

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 154 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Blue Coat Church of England Academy published for 2025 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Blue Coat Church of England Academy, 2025 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children (including previously looked after children); (ii) Children with known medical or social or pastoral needs who have an exceptional need for a place at Blue Coat CE Academy (see Note 2); (iii) Children who will have a sibling (in Years 7-11) in the Academy at the time of application and at the time of admission (see Note 3) (iv) Children who have attended one of the following designated “partner” primary schools:
2 All Saints National Academy, Bloxwich
3 Birchills CE Community Academy, Birchills
4 Blue Coat CE (A) Junior School, Walsall
5 Christ Church CE (C) Primary School, Leamore
6 Cooper & Jordan CE (A) Primary School, Aldridge
7 Holy Trinity CE (C) Primary School, Clayhanger
8 Little Bloxwich CE (C) Primary School, Little Bloxwich
9 Old Church CE (C) Primary School, Darlaston
10 St Giles CE (C) Primary School, Willenhall
11 St John’s CE (C) Primary School, Walsall Wood
12 St Margaret’s CE Primary School, Great Barr
13 St Michael’s CE (C) Primary School, Pelsall
14 A member of staff who has been employed at The Academy for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission is made/or the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. (vi) All other children

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2025 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Blue Coat Church of England Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2025 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

793

88.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

107

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

180

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 Blue Coat Church of England 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 Blue Coat Church of England Academy reported 107 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.1% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Blue Coat Church of England Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,080 places 645 on roll 2013/14 1,080 places 652 on roll 2014/15 1,080 places 698 on roll 2015/16 1,080 places 750 on roll 2016/17 750 places 779 on roll 2017/18 834 places 830 on roll 2018/19 834 places 878 on roll 2020/21 834 places 899 on roll 2021/22 1,080 places 882 on roll 2022/23 1,080 places 896 on roll 2023/24 1,080 places 935 on roll 2024/25 1,080 places 963 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Walsall

Postcode WS1 2ND. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138606).

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.