School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named King's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 171 and 212 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

212 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King's School

There is no published appeal success rate for King's 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

King's 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 King's 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 0.81 per place 88 first choices 108 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 95 first choices 98 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 125 first choices 100 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 143 first choices 124 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 160 first choices 151 places 2020/21 1.7 per place 225 first choices 132 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 229 first choices 156 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 226 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.47 per place 238 first choices 162 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 235 first choices 159 places 2025/26 1.42 per place 244 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 212 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at King's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 212 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 108 88 88 0.81
2016/17 98 95 88 0.97
2017/18 100 125 94 1.25
2018/19 124 143 116 1.15
2019/20 151 160 131 1.06
2020/21 132 225 127 1.7
2021/22 156 229 144 1.47
2022/23 157 226 154 1.44
2023/24 162 238 159 1.47
2024/25 159 235 153 1.48
2025/26 172 244 162 1.42
2026/27 171 212 157 1.24

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

212

827 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.1%

157 of 212

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 171 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

858

114.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

108

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 King's 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 King's 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King's School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 71 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 188 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 292 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 389 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 488 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 531 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 659 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 719 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 785 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 869 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 895 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. King's School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming King's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 November 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2813

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Brighton and Hove

Postcode BN3 8BN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139409).

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.