School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Axe Valley Academy?

In 2026/27, Axe Valley Academy offered 166 places and 157 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Devon actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

0.95

first choices for every place available

157 first preferences for 166 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Axe Valley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Axe Valley 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 Devon 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 Devon, 23.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 46 of 194 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 Devon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Devon 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

Axe Valley Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Axe Valley Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.89 per place 94 first choices 106 places 2018/19 0.75 per place 79 first choices 106 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 105 first choices 112 places 2020/21 0.84 per place 114 first choices 136 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 89 first choices 103 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 129 first choices 141 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 123 first choices 144 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 165 first choices 169 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 141 first choices 140 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 157 first choices 166 places
First preferences per place at Axe Valley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 157 first preferences for 166 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Axe Valley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 106 94 94 0.89
2018/19 106 79 79 0.75
2019/20 112 105 105 0.94
2020/21 136 114 114 0.84
2021/22 103 89 89 0.86
2022/23 141 129 128 0.91
2023/24 144 123 122 0.85
2024/25 169 165 165 0.98
2025/26 140 141 136 1.01
2026/27 166 157 157 0.95

Places offered

166

in 2026/27

Named first choice

157

231 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

157 of 157

Offers to families outside the council

9%

14 of 163 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

749

83.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

151

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 Axe Valley 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 Axe Valley Academy reported 151 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.2% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Axe Valley Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 900 places 718 on roll 2017/18 900 places 672 on roll 2018/19 900 places 624 on roll 2020/21 900 places 583 on roll 2021/22 900 places 587 on roll 2022/23 900 places 641 on roll 2023/24 900 places 690 on roll 2024/25 900 places 749 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. Axe Valley Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Axe Valley Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
27 August 2025 Arrangements did not comply ADA4466 and ADA4476

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Devon

Postcode EX13 5EA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144392).

Other contested secondary schools in Devon

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.