School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wolverhampton Girls' High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 186 families who named Wolverhampton Girls' High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 193 and 334 put it first.

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

1.73

first choices for every place available

334 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wolverhampton Girls' High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wolverhampton Girls' High School, 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

Wolverhampton Girls' High School 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 Wolverhampton Girls' High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.43 per place 345 first choices 142 places 2016/17 2.49 per place 344 first choices 138 places 2017/18 2.42 per place 331 first choices 137 places 2018/19 2.39 per place 334 first choices 140 places 2019/20 2.65 per place 360 first choices 136 places 2020/21 2.18 per place 382 first choices 175 places 2021/22 2.14 per place 371 first choices 173 places 2022/23 1.88 per place 362 first choices 193 places 2023/24 1.98 per place 345 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.61 per place 319 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.78 per place 320 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.73 per place 334 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at Wolverhampton Girls' High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 334 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wolverhampton Girls' High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 142 345 130 2.43
2016/17 138 344 126 2.49
2017/18 137 331 127 2.42
2018/19 140 334 125 2.39
2019/20 136 360 121 2.65
2020/21 175 382 162 2.18
2021/22 173 371 157 2.14
2022/23 193 362 167 1.88
2023/24 174 345 144 1.98
2024/25 198 319 143 1.61
2025/26 180 320 150 1.78
2026/27 193 334 148 1.73

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

334

731 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

44.3%

148 of 334

Offers to families outside the council

55%

107 of 193 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

898

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

294

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 Wolverhampton Girls' High School 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 Wolverhampton Girls' High School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wolverhampton Girls' High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 950 places 750 on roll 2014/15 950 places 783 on roll 2015/16 950 places 838 on roll 2016/17 950 places 859 on roll 2017/18 950 places 892 on roll 2018/19 1,045 places 955 on roll 2020/21 1,230 places 1,066 on roll 2021/22 1,230 places 1,117 on roll 2022/23 1,230 places 1,142 on roll 2023/24 1,230 places 1,179 on roll 2024/25 1,194 places 1,211 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. Wolverhampton Girls' High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Wolverhampton Girls' High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 January 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3532

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 converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV6 0BY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140798).

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.