School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ashton Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 50 families who named Ashton Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 213 and 254 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

254 first preferences for 213 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ashton Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ashton Park 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 Bristol, City of 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 Bristol, City of, 28% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 171 of 610 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 Bristol, City of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bristol, City of 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

Ashton Park School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Ashton Park 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 0.73 per place 166 first choices 227 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 198 first choices 213 places 2017/18 0.78 per place 174 first choices 222 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 203 first choices 215 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 212 first choices 221 places 2020/21 0.82 per place 182 first choices 223 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 198 first choices 222 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 185 first choices 217 places 2023/24 0.81 per place 174 first choices 215 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 224 first choices 216 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 233 first choices 217 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 254 first choices 213 places
First preferences per place at Ashton Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 254 first preferences for 213 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ashton Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 227 166 166 0.73
2016/17 213 198 172 0.93
2017/18 222 174 174 0.78
2018/19 215 203 175 0.94
2019/20 221 212 182 0.96
2020/21 223 182 168 0.82
2021/22 222 198 173 0.89
2022/23 217 185 169 0.85
2023/24 215 174 163 0.81
2024/25 216 224 199 1.04
2025/26 217 233 198 1.07
2026/27 213 254 204 1.19

Places offered

213

in 2026/27

Named first choice

254

447 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.3%

204 of 254

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 213 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 109278.

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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,084

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

4

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Ashton Park 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 Ashton Park 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ashton Park School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,155 places 1,151 on roll 2010/11 1,155 places 1,185 on roll 2011/12 1,330 places 1,190 on roll 2012/13 1,330 places 1,146 on roll 2013/14 1,330 places 1,173 on roll 2014/15 1,330 places 1,201 on roll 2015/16 1,330 places 1,194 on roll 2016/17 1,330 places 1,176 on roll 2017/18 1,330 places 1,222 on roll 2018/19 1,330 places 1,252 on roll 2020/21 1,330 places 1,195 on roll 2021/22 1,330 places 1,220 on roll 2022/23 1,330 places 1,235 on roll 2023/24 1,330 places 1,241 on roll 2024/25 1,330 places 1,248 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
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS3 2JL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145398).

Other contested secondary schools in Bristol, City of

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.