School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queen Mary's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 232 families who named Queen Mary's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 367 put it first.

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

2.06

first choices for every place available

367 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queen Mary's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Queen Mary's Grammar School, 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

Queen Mary's Grammar School 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 Queen Mary's Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.99 per place 227 first choices 114 places 2016/17 2.1 per place 303 first choices 144 places 2017/18 2.28 per place 338 first choices 148 places 2018/19 2.61 per place 386 first choices 148 places 2019/20 2.05 per place 305 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.82 per place 319 first choices 175 places 2021/22 2.47 per place 430 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.99 per place 352 first choices 177 places 2023/24 2.14 per place 358 first choices 167 places 2024/25 2.15 per place 357 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.97 per place 343 first choices 174 places 2026/27 2.06 per place 367 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Queen Mary's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 367 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queen Mary's Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 114 227 83 1.99
2016/17 144 303 117 2.1
2017/18 148 338 112 2.28
2018/19 148 386 118 2.61
2019/20 149 305 118 2.05
2020/21 175 319 145 1.82
2021/22 174 430 153 2.47
2022/23 177 352 140 1.99
2023/24 167 358 135 2.14
2024/25 166 357 130 2.15
2025/26 174 343 125 1.97
2026/27 178 367 135 2.06

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

367

803 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

36.8%

135 of 367

Offers to families outside the council

62%

110 of 178 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

888

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

901

101.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

312

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 Queen Mary's Grammar School 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 Queen Mary's Grammar School 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 Queen Mary's Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 792 places 722 on roll 2012/13 792 places 731 on roll 2013/14 792 places 763 on roll 2014/15 800 places 818 on roll 2015/16 800 places 859 on roll 2016/17 936 places 936 on roll 2017/18 936 places 1,010 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,086 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,210 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,264 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,310 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,345 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,376 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. Queen Mary's Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Queen Mary's Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 September 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3934

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 converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Walsall

Postcode WS1 2PG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136773).

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.