School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Parkstone Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Parkstone Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 213 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

213 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Parkstone Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Parkstone Grammar 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, 24.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 163 of 669 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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

Parkstone Grammar 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 Parkstone Grammar 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 1.38 per place 231 first choices 168 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 241 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 212 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.23 per place 220 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.34 per place 242 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 240 first choices 194 places 2021/22 1.38 per place 266 first choices 193 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 227 first choices 191 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 238 first choices 192 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 227 first choices 191 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 239 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 213 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at Parkstone Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 213 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Parkstone Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 168 231 167 1.38
2016/17 180 241 175 1.34
2017/18 181 212 176 1.17
2018/19 179 220 174 1.23
2019/20 180 242 180 1.34
2020/21 194 240 188 1.24
2021/22 193 266 182 1.38
2022/23 191 227 178 1.19
2023/24 192 238 184 1.24
2024/25 191 227 185 1.19
2025/26 192 239 182 1.24
2026/27 192 213 179 1.11

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

213

350 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84%

179 of 213

Offers to families outside the council

17%

32 of 192 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

942

104.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

42

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

357

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 Parkstone Grammar 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 Parkstone Grammar 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Parkstone Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,397 places 1,108 on roll 2011/12 1,113 places 1,113 on roll 2012/13 988 places 1,084 on roll 2013/14 1,397 places 1,230 on roll 2014/15 1,397 places 1,237 on roll 2015/16 1,360 places 1,235 on roll 2016/17 1,360 places 1,235 on roll 2017/18 1,360 places 1,222 on roll 2018/19 1,360 places 1,209 on roll 2020/21 1,257 places 1,239 on roll 2021/22 1,257 places 1,234 on roll 2022/23 1,257 places 1,223 on roll 2023/24 1,257 places 1,219 on roll 2024/25 1,257 places 1,243 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. Parkstone Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Parkstone Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 August 2018 No fault found ADA3454

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
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Postcode BH17 7EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136368).

Other contested secondary schools in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

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.