School admission appeals in Bristol, City of
Bristol, City of heard 158 school admission appeals in 2026, and 44 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Bristol, City of as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Bristol, City of success rate has run 8 percentage points higher than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Bristol, City of were upheld
172 of 627 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
215
by parents in Bristol, City of
Appeals heard by a panel
158
73% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
44
27.8% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
76.5% of the primary appeals heard in Bristol, City of were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Bristol, City of, 0% of infant class size appeals were upheld (0 of 13 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Bristol, City of
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Bristol, City of rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Bristol, City of
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 610 | 171 | 28% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 17 | 1 | 5.9% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 13 | 0 | 0% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Bristol, City of, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Bristol, City of | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 398 | 77 | 19.3% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 367 | 80 | 21.8% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 297 | 51 | 17.2% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 349 | 69 | 19.8% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 306 | 51 | 16.7% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 336 | 71 | 21.1% | 19% |
| 2022 | 303 | 80 | 26.4% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 254 | 69 | 27.2% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 247 | 64 | 25.9% | 20% |
| 2025 | 222 | 64 | 28.8% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 158 | 44 | 27.8% | 18.5% |
How Bristol, City of compares
Success rate ranking
29 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
63 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 627 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Bristol, City of
Bristol, City of has 126 state-funded mainstream schools — 102 primary, 22 secondary and 2 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Bristol, Bedminster, Hengrove and Montpelier.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Bristol, City of schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 14 secondary and 35 primary schools in Bristol, City of →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol Cathedral Choir School | 141 | 214 | 1.52 |
| Redland Green School | 225 | 337 | 1.50 |
| Bristol Free School | 218 | 300 | 1.38 |
| St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School | 207 | 277 | 1.34 |
| Trinity Academy | 170 | 213 | 1.25 |
| St Bede's Catholic College | 204 | 251 | 1.23 |
| St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School | 141 | 171 | 1.21 |
| Ashton Park School | 213 | 254 | 1.19 |
| Bristol Metropolitan Academy | 205 | 231 | 1.13 |
| Bristol Brunel Academy | 226 | 248 | 1.10 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avanti Gardens School | 59 | 91 | 1.54 |
| Westbury Park School | 59 | 88 | 1.49 |
| Brentry Primary School | 29 | 43 | 1.48 |
| Westbury-On-Trym Church of England Academy | 60 | 87 | 1.45 |
| Whitehall Primary School | 90 | 129 | 1.43 |
| St Bernadette Catholic Voluntary Aided Primary School | 30 | 41 | 1.37 |
| Victoria Park Primary School | 58 | 78 | 1.34 |
| Oasis Academy Marksbury Road | 30 | 40 | 1.33 |
| Hillcrest Primary School | 60 | 76 | 1.27 |
| St Teresa's Catholic Primary School | 30 | 38 | 1.27 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Bristol, City of
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. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 17 objections about schools in Bristol, City of, and found the arrangements did not comply in 13.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Bristol Metropolitan Academy | 24 July 2024 | Did not comply |
| Avanti Gardens School | 30 April 2024 | Did not comply |
| Trinity Academy, Bristol | 24 May 2023 | Did not comply |
| St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School | 10 August 2020 | Complied |
| Bedminster Down School | 22 August 2018 | Complied |
| Colston's Girls' School | 16 August 2018 | Complied |
| Fairfield High School | 13 August 2018 | Complied |
| St Bede’s Catholic College | 18 August 2016 | Did not comply |
| Merchants’ Academy | 25 November 2015 | Did not comply |
| St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School | 24 November 2015 | Did not comply |
Bristol, City of does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.