School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dorothy Stringer School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named Dorothy Stringer School as their first choice did not get a place: 290 put it first and 253 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.

37

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

290 first preferences for 319 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dorothy Stringer School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dorothy Stringer 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

Dorothy Stringer School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 4 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 Dorothy Stringer 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 1.41 per place 461 first choices 326 places 2016/17 1.45 per place 490 first choices 339 places 2017/18 1.39 per place 455 first choices 327 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 405 first choices 324 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 425 first choices 346 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 419 first choices 349 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 381 first choices 324 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 285 first choices 343 places 2023/24 0.79 per place 253 first choices 322 places 2024/25 0.71 per place 233 first choices 327 places 2025/26 0.65 per place 208 first choices 322 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 290 first choices 319 places
First preferences per place at Dorothy Stringer School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 290 first preferences for 319 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dorothy Stringer School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 326 461 318 1.41
2016/17 339 490 332 1.45
2017/18 327 455 323 1.39
2018/19 324 405 318 1.25
2019/20 346 425 338 1.23
2020/21 349 419 342 1.2
2021/22 324 381 301 1.18
2022/23 343 285 253 0.83
2023/24 322 253 235 0.79
2024/25 327 233 198 0.71
2025/26 322 208 179 0.65
2026/27 319 290 253 0.91

Places offered

319

in 2026/27

Named first choice

290

1,065 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.2%

253 of 290

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 319 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

1,690

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,629

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

61

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 Dorothy Stringer 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 Dorothy Stringer School reported 61 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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 Dorothy Stringer School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,550 places 1,668 on roll 2010/11 1,550 places 1,639 on roll 2011/12 1,650 places 1,644 on roll 2012/13 1,650 places 1,636 on roll 2013/14 1,650 places 1,634 on roll 2014/15 1,650 places 1,634 on roll 2015/16 1,650 places 1,652 on roll 2016/17 1,650 places 1,656 on roll 2017/18 1,650 places 1,646 on roll 2018/19 1,650 places 1,671 on roll 2020/21 1,670 places 1,669 on roll 2021/22 1,670 places 1,655 on roll 2022/23 1,670 places 1,638 on roll 2023/24 1,670 places 1,632 on roll 2024/25 1,690 places 1,629 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 BN1 6PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114580).

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.