School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Budehaven Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Budehaven Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 208 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

208 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Budehaven Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Budehaven Community 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 Cornwall 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 Cornwall, 40.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 105 of 258 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 Cornwall.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cornwall 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

Budehaven Community School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Budehaven Community 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 per place 164 first choices 164 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 169 first choices 167 places 2017/18 1 per place 207 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 222 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1 per place 199 first choices 199 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 190 first choices 189 places 2021/22 1 per place 194 first choices 194 places 2022/23 1 per place 193 first choices 193 places 2023/24 1 per place 182 first choices 182 places 2024/25 1 per place 202 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 218 first choices 209 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 208 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Budehaven Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 208 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Budehaven Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 164 164 164 1
2016/17 167 169 167 1.01
2017/18 206 207 205 1
2018/19 208 222 208 1.07
2019/20 199 199 199 1
2020/21 189 190 189 1.01
2021/22 194 194 193 1
2022/23 193 193 193 1
2023/24 182 182 181 1
2024/25 203 202 202 1
2025/26 209 218 209 1.04
2026/27 204 208 204 1.02

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

208

265 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.1%

204 of 208

Offers to families outside the council

10%

21 of 204 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

1,330

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

999

75.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

331

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

186

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 Budehaven Community 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 Budehaven Community School reported 331 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 75.1% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Budehaven Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,325 places 1,278 on roll 2010/11 1,304 places 1,283 on roll 2011/12 1,304 places 1,246 on roll 2012/13 1,304 places 1,192 on roll 2013/14 1,304 places 1,148 on roll 2014/15 1,304 places 1,119 on roll 2015/16 1,304 places 1,077 on roll 2016/17 1,304 places 1,053 on roll 2017/18 1,304 places 1,126 on roll 2018/19 1,304 places 1,138 on roll 2020/21 1,304 places 1,169 on roll 2021/22 1,304 places 1,213 on roll 2022/23 1,304 places 1,157 on roll 2023/24 1,304 places 1,137 on roll 2024/25 1,516 places 1,134 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cornwall

Postcode EX23 8DQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112045).

Other contested secondary schools in Cornwall

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.