School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bristol Metropolitan Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 44 families who named Bristol Metropolitan Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 231 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.

1.13

first choices for every place available

231 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bristol Metropolitan Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bristol Metropolitan Academy, 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 Metropolitan Academy turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 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 Metropolitan Academy, 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 0.75 per place 125 first choices 167 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 158 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 144 first choices 176 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 212 first choices 191 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 199 first choices 216 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 245 first choices 217 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 253 first choices 219 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 271 first choices 210 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 226 first choices 211 places 2024/25 1.31 per place 279 first choices 213 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 225 first choices 209 places 2026/27 1.13 per place 231 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Bristol Metropolitan Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 231 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bristol Metropolitan Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 167 125 125 0.75
2016/17 180 158 145 0.88
2017/18 176 144 135 0.82
2018/19 191 212 147 1.11
2019/20 216 199 169 0.92
2020/21 217 245 187 1.13
2021/22 219 253 200 1.16
2022/23 210 271 181 1.29
2023/24 211 226 186 1.07
2024/25 213 279 188 1.31
2025/26 209 225 182 1.08
2026/27 205 231 187 1.13

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

231

454 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81%

187 of 231

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 205 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

945

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,100

116.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

155

reported as full or beyond

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 Bristol Metropolitan Academy 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 Metropolitan Academy 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 Bristol Metropolitan Academy 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 2009/10 945 places 513 on roll 2010/11 990 places 510 on roll 2011/12 945 places 573 on roll 2012/13 945 places 654 on roll 2013/14 945 places 716 on roll 2014/15 945 places 760 on roll 2015/16 945 places 790 on roll 2016/17 945 places 841 on roll 2017/18 945 places 867 on roll 2018/19 945 places 898 on roll 2020/21 945 places 1,011 on roll 2021/22 945 places 1,046 on roll 2022/23 945 places 1,091 on roll 2023/24 945 places 1,109 on roll 2024/25 945 places 1,100 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Bristol Metropolitan Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bristol Metropolitan Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 July 2024 Arrangements did not comply ADA4270

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 BS16 2HD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135959).

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.