School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Nunnery Wood High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named Nunnery Wood High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 293 and 299 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

299 first preferences for 293 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Nunnery Wood High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Nunnery Wood 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 Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 90 of 458 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 Worcestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Worcestershire 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

Nunnery Wood High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Nunnery Wood High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 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 0.94 per place 248 first choices 263 places 2016/17 1.03 per place 277 first choices 268 places 2017/18 1 per place 273 first choices 274 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 325 first choices 299 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 311 first choices 295 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 306 first choices 292 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 338 first choices 294 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 333 first choices 301 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 347 first choices 294 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 335 first choices 287 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 314 first choices 291 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 299 first choices 293 places
First preferences per place at Nunnery Wood High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 299 first preferences for 293 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Nunnery Wood 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
2015/16 263 248 241 0.94
2016/17 268 277 255 1.03
2017/18 274 273 242 1
2018/19 299 325 282 1.09
2019/20 295 311 273 1.05
2020/21 292 306 281 1.05
2021/22 294 338 290 1.15
2022/23 301 333 295 1.11
2023/24 294 347 291 1.18
2024/25 287 335 284 1.17
2025/26 291 314 285 1.08
2026/27 293 299 261 1.02

Places offered

293

in 2026/27

Named first choice

299

562 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.3%

261 of 299

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 293 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

1,567

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,476

94.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

91

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Nunnery Wood 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 Nunnery Wood High School reported 91 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.2% 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 Nunnery Wood High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,356 places 1,334 on roll 2012/13 1,356 places 1,335 on roll 2013/14 1,356 places 1,339 on roll 2014/15 1,356 places 1,326 on roll 2015/16 1,356 places 1,313 on roll 2016/17 1,356 places 1,316 on roll 2017/18 1,356 places 1,318 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,343 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,441 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,453 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,491 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,488 on roll 2024/25 1,567 places 1,476 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
Worcestershire

Postcode WR5 2LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137051).

Other contested secondary schools in Worcestershire

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.