School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Penrice Academy?

In 2026/27, Penrice Academy offered 273 places and 251 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.92

first choices for every place available

251 first preferences for 273 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Penrice Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Penrice 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 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

Penrice Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Penrice 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 1.09 per place 303 first choices 277 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 310 first choices 282 places 2017/18 1 per place 292 first choices 292 places 2018/19 1 per place 288 first choices 288 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 306 first choices 288 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 366 first choices 295 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 323 first choices 285 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 333 first choices 296 places 2023/24 1.08 per place 327 first choices 304 places 2024/25 1 per place 272 first choices 272 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 277 first choices 273 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 251 first choices 273 places
First preferences per place at Penrice Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 251 first preferences for 273 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Penrice Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 277 303 276 1.09
2016/17 282 310 282 1.1
2017/18 292 292 292 1
2018/19 288 288 286 1
2019/20 288 306 282 1.06
2020/21 295 366 288 1.24
2021/22 285 323 280 1.13
2022/23 296 333 293 1.12
2023/24 304 327 303 1.08
2024/25 272 272 272 1
2025/26 273 277 273 1.01
2026/27 273 251 251 0.92

Places offered

273

in 2026/27

Named first choice

251

503 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

251 of 251

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 273 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

1,479

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,409

95.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

70

across Years 7 to 11

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 Penrice 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 Penrice Academy reported 70 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.3% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Penrice Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,350 places 1,304 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,331 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,348 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,363 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,376 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,400 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,404 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,419 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,408 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,414 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,424 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,420 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,412 on roll 2024/25 1,479 places 1,409 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. Penrice Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Penrice Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 July 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2637

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
Cornwall

Postcode PL25 3NR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136573).

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.