School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fairfield High School?

In 2026/27, Fairfield High School offered 204 places and 148 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.73

first choices for every place available

148 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fairfield High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fairfield High 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

Fairfield High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 5 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 Fairfield High 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 0.63 per place 130 first choices 207 places 2016/17 0.7 per place 146 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 169 first choices 213 places 2018/19 1 per place 214 first choices 215 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 204 first choices 213 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 187 first choices 209 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 192 first choices 212 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 215 first choices 209 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 216 first choices 209 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 218 first choices 206 places 2025/26 0.74 per place 154 first choices 207 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 148 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Fairfield High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 148 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fairfield High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 207 130 130 0.63
2016/17 208 146 146 0.7
2017/18 213 169 144 0.79
2018/19 215 214 172 1
2019/20 213 204 156 0.96
2020/21 209 187 163 0.89
2021/22 212 192 172 0.91
2022/23 209 215 178 1.03
2023/24 209 216 174 1.03
2024/25 206 218 172 1.06
2025/26 207 154 154 0.74
2026/27 204 148 148 0.73

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

148

491 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

148 of 148

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 179 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 109290.

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

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 Fairfield High 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 Fairfield High 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 Fairfield High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,080 places 960 on roll 2010/11 1,080 places 867 on roll 2011/12 1,080 places 756 on roll 2012/13 1,080 places 670 on roll 2013/14 1,080 places 636 on roll 2014/15 1,080 places 634 on roll 2015/16 1,080 places 744 on roll 2016/17 1,080 places 842 on roll 2017/18 1,080 places 923 on roll 2018/19 1,080 places 1,022 on roll 2020/21 1,080 places 1,071 on roll 2021/22 1,080 places 1,072 on roll 2022/23 1,080 places 1,082 on roll 2023/24 1,080 places 1,079 on roll 2024/25 1,080 places 1,084 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. Fairfield High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Fairfield High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 August 2018 No fault found ADA3481

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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS7 9NL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141705).

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.