School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Patcham High School?

In 2026/27, Patcham High School offered 198 places and 145 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.73

first choices for every place available

145 first preferences for 198 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Patcham High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Patcham High 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

Patcham High School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 5 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 Patcham High 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 per place 206 first choices 207 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 214 first choices 212 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 209 first choices 213 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 222 first choices 220 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 215 first choices 219 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 211 first choices 216 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 207 first choices 221 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 209 first choices 214 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 198 first choices 220 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 206 first choices 220 places 2025/26 0.74 per place 153 first choices 208 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 145 first choices 198 places
First preferences per place at Patcham High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 145 first preferences for 198 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Patcham High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 207 206 183 1
2016/17 212 214 182 1.01
2017/18 213 209 183 0.98
2018/19 220 222 186 1.01
2019/20 219 215 186 0.98
2020/21 216 211 198 0.98
2021/22 221 207 189 0.94
2022/23 214 209 188 0.98
2023/24 220 198 191 0.9
2024/25 220 206 178 0.94
2025/26 208 153 153 0.74
2026/27 198 145 145 0.73

Places offered

198

in 2026/27

Named first choice

145

603 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

145 of 145

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 191 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

1,125

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,103

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

22

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 Patcham High 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 Patcham High School reported 22 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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 Patcham High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,050 places 937 on roll 2010/11 1,050 places 955 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 973 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 996 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,025 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,017 on roll 2015/16 1,075 places 1,028 on roll 2016/17 1,075 places 1,034 on roll 2017/18 1,075 places 1,038 on roll 2018/19 1,125 places 1,053 on roll 2020/21 1,125 places 1,081 on roll 2021/22 1,125 places 1,102 on roll 2022/23 1,125 places 1,109 on roll 2023/24 1,125 places 1,104 on roll 2024/25 1,125 places 1,103 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 8PB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114608).

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.