School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queen Mary's High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 167 families who named Queen Mary's High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 263 put it first.

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

1.77

first choices for every place available

263 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queen Mary's High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Queen Mary's High 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 High 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 High 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 2.32 per place 246 first choices 106 places 2016/17 1.88 per place 220 first choices 117 places 2017/18 2.65 per place 276 first choices 104 places 2018/19 1.82 per place 206 first choices 113 places 2019/20 2.2 per place 266 first choices 121 places 2020/21 2.1 per place 306 first choices 146 places 2021/22 2.15 per place 316 first choices 147 places 2022/23 1.84 per place 261 first choices 142 places 2023/24 1.9 per place 259 first choices 136 places 2024/25 1.87 per place 271 first choices 145 places 2025/26 2.17 per place 312 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.77 per place 263 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Queen Mary's High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 263 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queen Mary's High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 106 246 71 2.32
2016/17 117 220 75 1.88
2017/18 104 276 78 2.65
2018/19 113 206 72 1.82
2019/20 121 266 80 2.2
2020/21 146 306 116 2.1
2021/22 147 316 122 2.15
2022/23 142 261 97 1.84
2023/24 136 259 107 1.9
2024/25 145 271 97 1.87
2025/26 144 312 91 2.17
2026/27 149 263 96 1.77

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

263

851 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

36.5%

96 of 263

Offers to families outside the council

56%

83 of 149 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

688

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

745

108.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

57

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 High 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 High 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 High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 792 places 700 on roll 2012/13 792 places 662 on roll 2013/14 792 places 658 on roll 2014/15 792 places 702 on roll 2015/16 792 places 716 on roll 2016/17 792 places 751 on roll 2017/18 792 places 754 on roll 2018/19 792 places 733 on roll 2020/21 900 places 845 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 887 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 909 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 936 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 944 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 High 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 High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
11 October 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3776

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 WS4 2AE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136777).

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.