School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cotham School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Cotham School as their first choice did not get a place: 160 put it first and 159 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

160 first preferences for 247 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cotham School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cotham 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

Cotham School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 8 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 Cotham 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 166 first choices 215 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 168 first choices 215 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 216 first choices 210 places 2018/19 0.7 per place 168 first choices 240 places 2019/20 0.63 per place 148 first choices 236 places 2020/21 0.72 per place 174 first choices 243 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 158 first choices 243 places 2022/23 0.56 per place 136 first choices 241 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 164 first choices 237 places 2024/25 0.6 per place 155 first choices 258 places 2025/26 0.63 per place 165 first choices 260 places 2026/27 0.65 per place 160 first choices 247 places
First preferences per place at Cotham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 160 first preferences for 247 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cotham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 215 166 135 0.77
2016/17 215 168 133 0.78
2017/18 210 216 147 1.03
2018/19 240 168 141 0.7
2019/20 236 148 124 0.63
2020/21 243 174 150 0.72
2021/22 243 158 144 0.65
2022/23 241 136 119 0.56
2023/24 237 164 143 0.69
2024/25 258 155 139 0.6
2025/26 260 165 165 0.63
2026/27 247 160 159 0.65

Places offered

247

in 2026/27

Named first choice

160

661 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.4%

159 of 160

Offers to families outside the council

2%

6 of 247 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

1,215

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,221

100.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

450

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 Cotham 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 Cotham 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 Cotham School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,480 places 1,364 on roll 2012/13 1,480 places 1,375 on roll 2013/14 1,480 places 1,389 on roll 2014/15 1,480 places 1,465 on roll 2015/16 1,480 places 1,494 on roll 2016/17 1,480 places 1,481 on roll 2017/18 1,480 places 1,454 on roll 2018/19 1,557 places 1,493 on roll 2020/21 1,557 places 1,522 on roll 2021/22 1,557 places 1,588 on roll 2022/23 1,665 places 1,638 on roll 2023/24 1,665 places 1,631 on roll 2024/25 1,665 places 1,654 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS6 6DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137440).

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.