School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Penryn College?

In 2026/27, Penryn College offered 221 places and 221 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.

1

first choices for every place available

221 first preferences for 221 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Penryn College

There is no published appeal success rate for Penryn 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

Penryn College turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Penryn 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 1.17 per place 239 first choices 204 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 253 first choices 227 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 239 first choices 207 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 235 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 233 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 250 first choices 223 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 256 first choices 217 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 289 first choices 219 places 2023/24 1.54 per place 332 first choices 216 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 266 first choices 219 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 289 first choices 214 places 2026/27 1 per place 221 first choices 221 places
First preferences per place at Penryn College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 221 first preferences for 221 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Penryn College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 204 239 203 1.17
2016/17 227 253 227 1.11
2017/18 207 239 202 1.15
2018/19 216 235 216 1.09
2019/20 220 233 219 1.06
2020/21 223 250 223 1.12
2021/22 217 256 217 1.18
2022/23 219 289 218 1.32
2023/24 216 332 215 1.54
2024/25 219 266 218 1.21
2025/26 214 289 214 1.35
2026/27 221 221 221 1

Places offered

221

in 2026/27

Named first choice

221

393 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

221 of 221

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 221 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

1,092

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,145

104.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

53

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 Penryn 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 Penryn College 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 Penryn College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,050 places 1,032 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,047 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,052 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,048 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,074 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,123 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,130 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,144 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,156 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,135 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,147 on roll 2023/24 1,092 places 1,147 on roll 2024/25 1,092 places 1,145 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 TR10 8PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136852).

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.