School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Royal School, Wolverhampton?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 150 families who named The Royal School, Wolverhampton as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 30 and 171 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Wolverhampton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

5.70

first choices for every place available

171 first preferences for 30 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Royal School, Wolverhampton

There is no published appeal success rate for The Royal School, Wolverhampton, 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

The Royal School, Wolverhampton turned first-choice families away in every one of the 10 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 The Royal School, Wolverhampton, 2017/18 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 2.4 4.8 7.1 9.5 one first preference per place 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 8.94 per place 295 first choices 33 places 2018/19 9.31 per place 270 first choices 29 places 2019/20 7.94 per place 246 first choices 31 places 2020/21 6.76 per place 223 first choices 33 places 2021/22 8.42 per place 219 first choices 26 places 2022/23 7.54 per place 211 first choices 28 places 2023/24 6.9 per place 200 first choices 29 places 2024/25 7.86 per place 220 first choices 28 places 2025/26 6.83 per place 205 first choices 30 places 2026/27 5.7 per place 171 first choices 30 places
First preferences per place at The Royal School, Wolverhampton. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 30 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Royal School, Wolverhampton, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 33 295 31 8.94
2018/19 29 270 25 9.31
2019/20 31 246 30 7.94
2020/21 33 223 27 6.76
2021/22 26 219 22 8.42
2022/23 28 211 23 7.54
2023/24 29 200 26 6.9
2024/25 28 220 24 7.86
2025/26 30 205 25 6.83
2026/27 30 171 21 5.7

Places offered

30

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

752 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

12.3%

21 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

7%

2 of 29 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

1,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,225

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 The Royal School, Wolverhampton 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 The Royal School, Wolverhampton reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Royal School, Wolverhampton from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,480 places 1,002 on roll 2017/18 1,480 places 1,182 on roll 2018/19 1,480 places 1,250 on roll 2020/21 1,480 places 1,412 on roll 2021/22 1,480 places 1,444 on roll 2022/23 1,480 places 1,471 on roll 2023/24 1,480 places 1,495 on roll 2024/25 1,480 places 1,501 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV3 0EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143101).

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.