School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Twynham School?

In 2026/27, Twynham School offered 206 places and 192 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.

0.93

first choices for every place available

192 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Twynham School

There is no published appeal success rate for Twynham 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

Twynham 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 Twynham 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 1.16 per place 302 first choices 260 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 332 first choices 262 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 301 first choices 258 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 292 first choices 260 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 276 first choices 260 places 2020/21 1.31 per place 343 first choices 261 places 2021/22 1.35 per place 349 first choices 259 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 303 first choices 257 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 261 first choices 259 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 273 first choices 255 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 243 first choices 261 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 192 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Twynham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Twynham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 260 302 256 1.16
2016/17 262 332 252 1.27
2017/18 258 301 250 1.17
2018/19 260 292 247 1.12
2019/20 260 276 238 1.06
2020/21 261 343 253 1.31
2021/22 259 349 251 1.35
2022/23 257 303 249 1.18
2023/24 259 261 247 1.01
2024/25 255 273 232 1.07
2025/26 261 243 243 0.93
2026/27 206 192 192 0.93

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

634 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

192 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 205 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

1,347

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,311

97.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

36

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

440

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 Twynham 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 Twynham School reported 36 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.3% 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 Twynham School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,464 places 1,598 on roll 2011/12 1,558 places 1,628 on roll 2012/13 1,618 places 1,629 on roll 2013/14 1,618 places 1,624 on roll 2014/15 1,586 places 1,620 on roll 2015/16 1,650 places 1,628 on roll 2016/17 1,618 places 1,659 on roll 2017/18 1,637 places 1,722 on roll 2018/19 1,787 places 1,743 on roll 2020/21 1,787 places 1,757 on roll 2021/22 1,787 places 1,809 on roll 2022/23 1,787 places 1,794 on roll 2023/24 1,787 places 1,754 on roll 2024/25 1,787 places 1,704 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. Twynham School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Twynham School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
31 October 2025 Arrangements did not comply ADA4462, ADA4463, ADA4464
9 July 2021 No fault found ADA3760

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
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Postcode BH23 1JF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136649).

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.