School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston SWB Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Ormiston SWB Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 240 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Wolverhampton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

1.07

first choices for every place available

240 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston SWB Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston SWB 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 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

Ormiston SWB Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 9 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Ormiston SWB Academy, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 1.04 per place 236 first choices 226 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 260 first choices 224 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 153 first choices 189 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 210 first choices 194 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 272 first choices 229 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 235 first choices 223 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 229 first choices 222 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 230 first choices 228 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 240 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston SWB Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 240 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston SWB Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 226 236 206 1.04
2019/20 224 260 203 1.16
2020/21 189 153 147 0.81
2021/22 194 210 175 1.08
2022/23 229 272 200 1.19
2023/24 223 235 196 1.05
2024/25 222 229 197 1.03
2025/26 228 230 207 1.01
2026/27 225 240 206 1.07

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

240

452 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.8%

206 of 240

Offers to families outside the council

28%

62 of 225 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,073

107.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

73

reported as full or beyond

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 Ormiston SWB 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 Ormiston SWB 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ormiston SWB Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,200 places 1,090 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,099 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,159 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,116 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,167 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,181 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,175 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV14 0LN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145008).

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.