School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hayesfield Girls School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 81 families who named Hayesfield Girls School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 234 and 308 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

308 first preferences for 234 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hayesfield Girls School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hayesfield Girls 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 Bath and North East Somerset 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 Bath and North East Somerset, 51.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 37 of 72 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 Bath and North East Somerset.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bath and North East Somerset 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

Hayesfield Girls 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 Hayesfield Girls 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 1.01 per place 210 first choices 208 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 240 first choices 209 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 266 first choices 220 places 2018/19 1.5 per place 346 first choices 230 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 316 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 267 first choices 220 places 2021/22 1.38 per place 308 first choices 223 places 2022/23 1.25 per place 270 first choices 216 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 284 first choices 218 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 283 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 262 first choices 231 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 308 first choices 234 places
First preferences per place at Hayesfield Girls School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 308 first preferences for 234 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hayesfield Girls School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 210 200 1.01
2016/17 209 240 204 1.15
2017/18 220 266 210 1.21
2018/19 230 346 219 1.5
2019/20 220 316 207 1.44
2020/21 220 267 214 1.21
2021/22 223 308 216 1.38
2022/23 216 270 202 1.25
2023/24 218 284 210 1.3
2024/25 235 283 228 1.2
2025/26 231 262 216 1.13
2026/27 234 308 227 1.32

Places offered

234

in 2026/27

Named first choice

308

479 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.7%

227 of 308

Offers to families outside the council

8%

18 of 234 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

1,100

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,158

105.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

58

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Hayesfield Girls 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 Hayesfield Girls School 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hayesfield Girls 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 1,226 places 1,121 on roll 2012/13 1,226 places 1,116 on roll 2013/14 1,226 places 1,085 on roll 2014/15 1,226 places 1,094 on roll 2015/16 1,226 places 1,095 on roll 2016/17 1,226 places 1,166 on roll 2017/18 1,226 places 1,249 on roll 2018/19 1,226 places 1,297 on roll 2020/21 1,226 places 1,436 on roll 2021/22 1,420 places 1,439 on roll 2022/23 1,420 places 1,453 on roll 2023/24 1,420 places 1,498 on roll 2024/25 1,420 places 1,524 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. Hayesfield Girls School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Hayesfield Girls School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
8 October 2019 No fault found ADA3577

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bath and North East Somerset

Postcode BA2 3LA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136966).

Other contested secondary schools in Bath and North East Somerset

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.