School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Heath Park?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Heath Park as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 196 and 246 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

246 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Heath Park

There is no published appeal success rate for Heath Park, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wolverhampton 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 Wolverhampton, 10.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 133 of 1,282 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 Wolverhampton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wolverhampton 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

Heath Park turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Heath Park, 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 0.88 per place 174 first choices 198 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 247 first choices 198 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 201 first choices 197 places 2018/19 1.39 per place 272 first choices 196 places 2019/20 1.52 per place 299 first choices 197 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 252 first choices 197 places 2021/22 1.24 per place 239 first choices 192 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 214 first choices 198 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 244 first choices 197 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 243 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 253 first choices 198 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 246 first choices 196 places
First preferences per place at Heath Park. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 246 first preferences for 196 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Heath Park, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 198 174 165 0.88
2016/17 198 247 180 1.25
2017/18 197 201 171 1.02
2018/19 196 272 170 1.39
2019/20 197 299 174 1.52
2020/21 197 252 185 1.28
2021/22 192 239 168 1.24
2022/23 198 214 167 1.08
2023/24 197 244 163 1.24
2024/25 198 243 173 1.23
2025/26 198 253 176 1.28
2026/27 196 246 172 1.26

Places offered

196

in 2026/27

Named first choice

246

655 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.9%

172 of 246

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 196 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

1,014

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

996

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Heath Park 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 Heath Park reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Heath Park from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,214 places 1,179 on roll 2012/13 1,214 places 1,189 on roll 2013/14 1,214 places 1,194 on roll 2014/15 1,214 places 1,174 on roll 2015/16 1,214 places 1,171 on roll 2016/17 1,214 places 1,197 on roll 2017/18 1,214 places 1,175 on roll 2018/19 1,214 places 1,187 on roll 2020/21 1,214 places 1,201 on roll 2021/22 1,214 places 1,172 on roll 2022/23 1,214 places 1,174 on roll 2023/24 1,214 places 1,197 on roll 2024/25 1,214 places 1,184 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV11 1RD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137730).

Other contested secondary schools in Wolverhampton

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.