School admission appeals in Warwickshire
Warwickshire heard 379 school admission appeals in 2026, and 51 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Warwickshire as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Warwickshire success rate has run 2.1 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Warwickshire were upheld
255 of 1,471 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
569
by parents in Warwickshire
Appeals heard by a panel
379
67% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
51
13.5% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
57.6% of the primary appeals heard in Warwickshire were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Warwickshire, 5.7% of infant class size appeals were upheld (17 of 296 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Warwickshire
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Warwickshire rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Warwickshire
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 957 | 192 | 20.1% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 514 | 63 | 12.3% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 296 | 17 | 5.7% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Warwickshire, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Warwickshire | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 537 | 209 | 38.9% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 590 | 137 | 23.2% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 602 | 147 | 24.4% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 632 | 190 | 30.1% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 428 | 89 | 20.8% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 489 | 99 | 20.2% | 19% |
| 2022 | 484 | 84 | 17.4% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 451 | 78 | 17.3% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 552 | 111 | 20.1% | 20% |
| 2025 | 540 | 93 | 17.2% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 379 | 51 | 13.5% | 18.5% |
How Warwickshire compares
Success rate ranking
79 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
20 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 1,471 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Warwickshire
Warwickshire has 234 state-funded mainstream schools — 195 primary, 37 secondary and 2 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Rugby, Nuneaton, Leamington Spa and Warwick.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Warwickshire schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 27 secondary and 89 primary schools in Warwickshire →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| King Edward VI School | 87 | 221 | 2.54 |
| Stratford Girls' Grammar School | 120 | 289 | 2.41 |
| Lawrence Sheriff School | 150 | 319 | 2.13 |
| Alcester Grammar School | 149 | 293 | 1.97 |
| Rugby High School | 150 | 249 | 1.66 |
| Rugby Free Secondary School | 168 | 234 | 1.39 |
| St Thomas More Catholic Academy and Sixth Form College | 156 | 201 | 1.29 |
| Kenilworth School and Sixth Form | 319 | 385 | 1.21 |
| Southam College | 256 | 297 | 1.16 |
| Kineton High School | 172 | 192 | 1.12 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakley School | 29 | 57 | 1.97 |
| Clinton Primary School | 29 | 56 | 1.93 |
| Brailes Church of England Primary School | 14 | 25 | 1.79 |
| The Griffin Primary School | 29 | 47 | 1.62 |
| Bishops Tachbrook CofE Primary School | 30 | 47 | 1.57 |
| St Nicolas CofE Academy | 59 | 91 | 1.54 |
| Claverdon Primary School | 30 | 46 | 1.53 |
| Ilmington CofE Primary School | 15 | 23 | 1.53 |
| Bournebrook CofE Primary School | 25 | 38 | 1.52 |
| Welford-on-Avon Primary School | 30 | 45 | 1.50 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Warwickshire
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. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 34 objections about schools in Warwickshire, and found the arrangements did not comply in 16.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Cawston Grange Primary School | 7 January 2026 | Complied |
| Lawrence Sheriff School | 31 October 2025 | Complied |
| Alcester Academy | 13 August 2025 | Did not comply |
| George Eliot Academy | 8 September 2023 | Did not comply |
| Ashlawn School | 10 August 2023 | Did not comply |
| Southam Primary School | 26 July 2023 | Complied |
| Warwickshire County Council | 26 July 2023 | Complied |
| Warwickshire County Council Community and VC Schools | 7 February 2022 | Did not comply |
| Lawrence Sheriff School | 24 November 2021 | Complied |
| Stratford Girls’ Grammar School | 24 November 2021 | Complied |
Warwickshire does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.