School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wellsway School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Wellsway School as their first choice did not get a place: 202 put it first and 195 of them were offered one.

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.

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

202 first preferences for 226 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wellsway School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wellsway 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

Wellsway School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Wellsway 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 230 first choices 227 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 259 first choices 228 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 286 first choices 229 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 251 first choices 229 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 252 first choices 230 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 244 first choices 226 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 231 first choices 229 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 260 first choices 227 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 204 first choices 224 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 235 first choices 224 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 245 first choices 224 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 202 first choices 226 places
First preferences per place at Wellsway School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 226 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wellsway School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 227 230 221 1.01
2016/17 228 259 226 1.14
2017/18 229 286 224 1.25
2018/19 229 251 210 1.1
2019/20 230 252 212 1.1
2020/21 226 244 226 1.08
2021/22 229 231 216 1.01
2022/23 227 260 222 1.15
2023/24 224 204 202 0.91
2024/25 224 235 215 1.05
2025/26 224 245 216 1.09
2026/27 226 202 195 0.89

Places offered

226

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

387 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.5%

195 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

14%

31 of 226 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

1,172

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,118

95.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

54

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

227

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 Wellsway 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 Wellsway School reported 54 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.4% 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 Wellsway School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,386 places 1,341 on roll 2012/13 1,386 places 1,318 on roll 2013/14 1,349 places 1,335 on roll 2014/15 1,349 places 1,352 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,351 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,346 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,312 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,283 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,265 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,313 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,332 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,314 on roll 2024/25 1,399 places 1,329 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
Bath and North East Somerset

Postcode BS31 1PH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137523).

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.