School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Varndean School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 96 families who named Varndean School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 279 and 350 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.

1.25

first choices for every place available

350 first preferences for 279 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Varndean School

There is no published appeal success rate for Varndean 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

Varndean School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 Varndean 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 0.77 per place 212 first choices 276 places 2016/17 0.77 per place 216 first choices 281 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 299 first choices 265 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 347 first choices 292 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 294 first choices 290 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 293 first choices 291 places 2021/22 1.29 per place 379 first choices 294 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 436 first choices 303 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 401 first choices 291 places 2024/25 1.56 per place 435 first choices 278 places 2025/26 1.44 per place 411 first choices 285 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 350 first choices 279 places
First preferences per place at Varndean School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 350 first preferences for 279 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Varndean School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 276 212 175 0.77
2016/17 281 216 173 0.77
2017/18 265 299 223 1.13
2018/19 292 347 272 1.19
2019/20 290 294 242 1.01
2020/21 291 293 256 1.01
2021/22 294 379 290 1.29
2022/23 303 436 296 1.44
2023/24 291 401 284 1.38
2024/25 278 435 272 1.56
2025/26 285 411 269 1.44
2026/27 279 350 254 1.25

Places offered

279

in 2026/27

Named first choice

350

1,076 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.6%

254 of 350

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 279 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,499

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 Varndean 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 Varndean School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Varndean School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,301 places 1,317 on roll 2010/11 1,301 places 1,345 on roll 2011/12 1,301 places 1,350 on roll 2012/13 1,309 places 1,365 on roll 2013/14 1,318 places 1,342 on roll 2014/15 1,345 places 1,344 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,353 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,336 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,330 on roll 2018/19 1,390 places 1,357 on roll 2020/21 1,473 places 1,416 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,463 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,495 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,503 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,499 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 6NP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114579).

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.