School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blatchington Mill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Blatchington Mill School as their first choice did not get a place: 252 put it first and 237 of them were offered one.

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

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

252 first preferences for 323 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blatchington Mill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Blatchington Mill 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 Brighton and Hove 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 Brighton and Hove, 30.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 117 of 389 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 Brighton and Hove.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Brighton and Hove 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

Blatchington Mill School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 2 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 Blatchington Mill 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 1.31 per place 379 first choices 290 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 397 first choices 285 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 330 first choices 294 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 395 first choices 324 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 357 first choices 313 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 336 first choices 310 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 396 first choices 326 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 285 first choices 324 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 299 first choices 328 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 278 first choices 329 places 2025/26 0.78 per place 250 first choices 322 places 2026/27 0.78 per place 252 first choices 323 places
First preferences per place at Blatchington Mill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 252 first preferences for 323 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blatchington Mill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 290 379 276 1.31
2016/17 285 397 279 1.39
2017/18 294 330 276 1.12
2018/19 324 395 297 1.22
2019/20 313 357 271 1.14
2020/21 310 336 262 1.08
2021/22 326 396 280 1.21
2022/23 324 285 264 0.88
2023/24 328 299 259 0.91
2024/25 329 278 242 0.84
2025/26 322 250 236 0.78
2026/27 323 252 237 0.78

Places offered

323

in 2026/27

Named first choice

252

886 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94%

237 of 252

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 323 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

1,820

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,638

90% of capacity

Unfilled places

182

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Blatchington Mill 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 Blatchington Mill School reported 182 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Blatchington Mill School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,683 places 1,804 on roll 2010/11 1,689 places 1,757 on roll 2011/12 1,656 places 1,694 on roll 2012/13 1,632 places 1,644 on roll 2013/14 1,644 places 1,654 on roll 2014/15 1,656 places 1,647 on roll 2015/16 1,641 places 1,600 on roll 2016/17 1,638 places 1,571 on roll 2017/18 1,643 places 1,557 on roll 2018/19 1,670 places 1,529 on roll 2020/21 1,806 places 1,564 on roll 2021/22 1,746 places 1,590 on roll 2022/23 1,746 places 1,619 on roll 2023/24 1,746 places 1,633 on roll 2024/25 1,820 places 1,638 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Brighton and Hove

Postcode BN3 7BW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114606).

Other contested secondary schools in Brighton and Hove

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.