School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Launceston College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Launceston College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 209 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Launceston College

There is no published appeal success rate for Launceston College, 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

Launceston College turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Launceston College, 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 178 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1 per place 217 first choices 216 places 2017/18 1 per place 192 first choices 192 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 213 first choices 217 places 2019/20 1 per place 225 first choices 225 places 2020/21 1 per place 273 first choices 274 places 2021/22 1 per place 225 first choices 225 places 2022/23 1 per place 275 first choices 275 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 226 first choices 228 places 2024/25 1 per place 219 first choices 220 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 223 first choices 226 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 209 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at Launceston College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Launceston College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 178 176 1
2016/17 216 217 216 1
2017/18 192 192 191 1
2018/19 217 213 213 0.98
2019/20 225 225 225 1
2020/21 274 273 272 1
2021/22 225 225 224 1
2022/23 275 275 275 1
2023/24 228 226 226 0.99
2024/25 220 219 218 1
2025/26 226 223 223 0.99
2026/27 207 209 206 1.01

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

264 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.6%

206 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

11%

23 of 206 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

1,610

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,176

73% of capacity

Unfilled places

434

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

128

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 Launceston College 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 Launceston College reported 434 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 73% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Launceston College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,385 places 1,269 on roll 2013/14 1,385 places 1,254 on roll 2014/15 1,385 places 1,238 on roll 2015/16 1,385 places 1,214 on roll 2016/17 1,385 places 1,242 on roll 2017/18 1,385 places 1,259 on roll 2018/19 1,385 places 1,284 on roll 2020/21 1,385 places 1,364 on roll 2021/22 1,385 places 1,367 on roll 2022/23 1,385 places 1,379 on roll 2023/24 1,685 places 1,293 on roll 2024/25 1,738 places 1,270 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
Cornwall

Postcode PL15 9JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139155).

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.