School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Walsall Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 189 families who named Walsall Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 202 and 373 put it first.

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

1.85

first choices for every place available

373 first preferences for 202 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Walsall Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Walsall 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

Walsall Academy 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 Walsall Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.8 per place 318 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.8 per place 346 first choices 192 places 2017/18 2.03 per place 410 first choices 202 places 2018/19 1.86 per place 369 first choices 198 places 2019/20 2.18 per place 445 first choices 204 places 2020/21 1.83 per place 367 first choices 200 places 2021/22 1.95 per place 386 first choices 198 places 2022/23 1.64 per place 336 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.66 per place 336 first choices 203 places 2024/25 1.59 per place 315 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.89 per place 386 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.85 per place 373 first choices 202 places
First preferences per place at Walsall Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 373 first preferences for 202 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Walsall Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 318 162 1.8
2016/17 192 346 179 1.8
2017/18 202 410 188 2.03
2018/19 198 369 184 1.86
2019/20 204 445 193 2.18
2020/21 200 367 193 1.83
2021/22 198 386 185 1.95
2022/23 205 336 184 1.64
2023/24 203 336 186 1.66
2024/25 198 315 183 1.59
2025/26 204 386 195 1.89
2026/27 202 373 184 1.85

Places offered

202

in 2026/27

Named first choice

373

724 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49.3%

184 of 373

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 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

1,019

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,060

104% of capacity

Over its capacity by

41

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Walsall 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 Walsall 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Walsall Academy 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 1,200 places 1,075 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 1,080 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,111 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,114 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,136 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,158 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,184 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,207 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,232 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,284 on roll 2020/21 1,340 places 1,359 on roll 2021/22 1,275 places 1,360 on roll 2022/23 1,275 places 1,361 on roll 2023/24 1,339 places 1,381 on roll 2024/25 1,339 places 1,410 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. Walsall Academy has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Walsall Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
19 December 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2742
17 December 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2553
3 September 2012 Arrangements did not comply ADA2321

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Walsall

Postcode WS3 3LX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 133697).

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.