School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Poole Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 72 families who named Poole Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 177 and 243 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.

1.37

first choices for every place available

243 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Poole Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Poole 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

Poole 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 Poole 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 1.44 per place 237 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.29 per place 232 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 208 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 206 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 215 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 212 first choices 181 places 2021/22 1.51 per place 262 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 214 first choices 178 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 225 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 225 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 212 first choices 176 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 243 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at Poole Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 243 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Poole 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
2015/16 165 237 164 1.44
2016/17 180 232 178 1.29
2017/18 181 208 175 1.15
2018/19 179 206 165 1.15
2019/20 180 215 174 1.19
2020/21 181 212 171 1.17
2021/22 174 262 172 1.51
2022/23 178 214 178 1.2
2023/24 178 225 168 1.26
2024/25 180 225 168 1.25
2025/26 176 212 170 1.2
2026/27 177 243 171 1.37

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

243

400 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.4%

171 of 243

Offers to families outside the council

19%

33 of 177 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

840

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

899

107% of capacity

Over its capacity by

59

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

396

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 Poole 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 Poole 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Poole Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 940 places 1,002 on roll 2012/13 940 places 1,019 on roll 2013/14 1,236 places 1,185 on roll 2014/15 1,176 places 1,189 on roll 2015/16 1,225 places 1,188 on roll 2016/17 1,225 places 1,188 on roll 2017/18 1,225 places 1,190 on roll 2018/19 1,236 places 1,189 on roll 2020/21 1,236 places 1,235 on roll 2021/22 1,236 places 1,225 on roll 2022/23 1,236 places 1,198 on roll 2023/24 1,236 places 1,200 on roll 2024/25 1,236 places 1,198 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. Poole Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Poole Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 August 2018 No fault found ADA3452

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 9JU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136850).

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.