School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Redruth School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Redruth School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 285 and 307 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

307 first preferences for 285 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Redruth School

There is no published appeal success rate for Redruth 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

Redruth School 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 Redruth 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 0.87 per place 174 first choices 201 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 192 first choices 195 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 222 first choices 230 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 250 first choices 261 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 292 first choices 287 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 326 first choices 289 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 312 first choices 294 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 338 first choices 316 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 319 first choices 292 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 362 first choices 298 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 321 first choices 293 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 307 first choices 285 places
First preferences per place at Redruth School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 307 first preferences for 285 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Redruth School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 201 174 174 0.87
2016/17 195 192 192 0.98
2017/18 230 222 222 0.97
2018/19 261 250 250 0.96
2019/20 287 292 277 1.02
2020/21 289 326 286 1.13
2021/22 294 312 288 1.06
2022/23 316 338 300 1.07
2023/24 292 319 272 1.09
2024/25 298 362 294 1.21
2025/26 293 321 289 1.1
2026/27 285 307 284 1.08

Places offered

285

in 2026/27

Named first choice

307

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.5%

284 of 307

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 285 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

1,699

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,444

85% of capacity

Unfilled places

255

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 Redruth 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 Redruth School reported 255 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85% 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 Redruth School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,499 places 1,152 on roll 2010/11 1,416 places 1,079 on roll 2011/12 1,431 places 1,048 on roll 2012/13 1,431 places 1,002 on roll 2013/14 1,418 places 956 on roll 2014/15 1,418 places 953 on roll 2015/16 1,418 places 1,012 on roll 2016/17 1,418 places 1,045 on roll 2017/18 1,418 places 1,044 on roll 2018/19 1,418 places 1,115 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,316 on roll 2021/22 1,418 places 1,375 on roll 2022/23 1,418 places 1,433 on roll 2023/24 1,485 places 1,446 on roll 2024/25 1,699 places 1,444 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 TR15 1TA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112054).

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.