School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Grace Academy Darlaston?

In 2026/27, Grace Academy Darlaston offered 206 places and 181 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.88

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Grace Academy Darlaston

There is no published appeal success rate for Grace Academy Darlaston, 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

Grace Academy Darlaston turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 2 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 Grace Academy Darlaston, 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 0.83 per place 73 first choices 88 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 74 first choices 97 places 2017/18 0.7 per place 113 first choices 162 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 177 first choices 174 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 173 first choices 174 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 214 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 181 first choices 178 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 200 first choices 205 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 207 first choices 213 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 211 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 224 first choices 212 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 181 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Grace Academy Darlaston. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Grace Academy Darlaston, 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 88 73 73 0.83
2016/17 97 74 74 0.76
2017/18 162 113 113 0.7
2018/19 174 177 150 1.02
2019/20 174 173 151 0.99
2020/21 178 214 160 1.2
2021/22 178 181 162 1.02
2022/23 205 200 176 0.98
2023/24 213 207 193 0.97
2024/25 209 211 192 1.01
2025/26 212 224 193 1.06
2026/27 206 181 181 0.88

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

352 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

181 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

4%

8 of 202 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

975

101.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

140

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 Grace Academy Darlaston 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 Grace Academy Darlaston 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 Grace Academy Darlaston from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,500 places 847 on roll 2010/11 1,500 places 838 on roll 2011/12 1,500 places 816 on roll 2012/13 1,500 places 759 on roll 2013/14 1,500 places 709 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 672 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 670 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 719 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 814 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 865 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 933 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 975 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 990 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,032 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 1,050 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 WS10 8QJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135956).

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.