School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bristol Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 111 families who named Bristol Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 218 and 300 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.

1.38

first choices for every place available

300 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bristol Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bristol Free 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

Bristol Free School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 of those years. In the other 1 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 Bristol Free 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 1.4 per place 200 first choices 143 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 254 first choices 189 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 242 first choices 202 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 278 first choices 222 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 200 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 252 first choices 222 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 257 first choices 223 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 283 first choices 212 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 253 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.31 per place 290 first choices 221 places 2025/26 1.52 per place 311 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.38 per place 300 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at Bristol Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 300 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bristol Free School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 143 200 113 1.4
2016/17 189 254 162 1.34
2017/18 202 242 162 1.2
2018/19 222 278 178 1.25
2019/20 220 200 149 0.91
2020/21 222 252 160 1.14
2021/22 223 257 168 1.15
2022/23 212 283 177 1.33
2023/24 219 253 159 1.16
2024/25 221 290 194 1.31
2025/26 205 311 181 1.52
2026/27 218 300 189 1.38

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

300

638 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63%

189 of 300

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 218 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,020

102% of capacity

Over its capacity by

20

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Bristol Free 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 Bristol Free 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bristol Free School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 89 on roll 2012/13 750 places 221 on roll 2013/14 750 places 397 on roll 2014/15 750 places 552 on roll 2015/16 750 places 705 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 830 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 937 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 992 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,131 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,165 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,214 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,273 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,289 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS10 6NJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136822).

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.