School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Bishop of Winchester Academy?

In 2026/27, The Bishop of Winchester Academy offered 149 places and 82 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.55

first choices for every place available

82 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Bishop of Winchester Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Bishop of Winchester Academy, 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

The Bishop of Winchester Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 6 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 The Bishop of Winchester Academy, 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 1.11 per place 229 first choices 207 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 183 first choices 211 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 203 first choices 211 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 163 first choices 210 places 2019/20 1 per place 208 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 229 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 152 first choices 206 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 178 first choices 205 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 194 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.86 per place 178 first choices 207 places 2025/26 0.74 per place 148 first choices 200 places 2026/27 0.55 per place 82 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at The Bishop of Winchester Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 82 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Bishop of Winchester Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 207 229 196 1.11
2016/17 211 183 172 0.87
2017/18 211 203 181 0.96
2018/19 210 163 153 0.78
2019/20 208 208 146 1
2020/21 207 229 144 1.11
2021/22 206 152 127 0.74
2022/23 205 178 138 0.87
2023/24 208 194 172 0.93
2024/25 207 178 158 0.86
2025/26 200 148 148 0.74
2026/27 149 82 82 0.55

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

82

477 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

82 of 82

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 122 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,040

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 The Bishop of Winchester Academy 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 The Bishop of Winchester Academy reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Bishop of Winchester Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,250 places 693 on roll 2011/12 900 places 712 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 736 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 739 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 854 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 948 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,011 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 1,069 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,107 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,180 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,177 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,164 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,135 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,173 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. The Bishop of Winchester Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Bishop of Winchester Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 November 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2806

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Postcode BH8 9PW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136120).

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.