School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Braunton Academy?

In 2026/27, Braunton Academy offered 168 places and 167 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

167 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Braunton Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Braunton 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

Braunton Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Braunton 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 0.99 per place 128 first choices 129 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 142 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1 per place 155 first choices 155 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 164 first choices 143 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 177 first choices 146 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 156 first choices 144 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 160 first choices 139 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 174 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 175 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 203 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 161 first choices 162 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 167 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Braunton Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Braunton Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 129 128 128 0.99
2016/17 150 142 141 0.95
2017/18 155 155 155 1
2018/19 143 164 143 1.15
2019/20 146 177 146 1.21
2020/21 144 156 144 1.08
2021/22 139 160 139 1.15
2022/23 176 174 174 0.99
2023/24 173 175 173 1.01
2024/25 177 203 177 1.15
2025/26 162 161 161 0.99
2026/27 168 167 167 0.99

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

195 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

167 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

835

111.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

85

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 Braunton 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 Braunton Academy 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 Braunton Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 700 on roll 2012/13 750 places 667 on roll 2013/14 750 places 655 on roll 2014/15 750 places 663 on roll 2015/16 750 places 644 on roll 2016/17 750 places 670 on roll 2017/18 750 places 695 on roll 2018/19 750 places 713 on roll 2020/21 750 places 756 on roll 2021/22 750 places 753 on roll 2022/23 750 places 776 on roll 2023/24 750 places 807 on roll 2024/25 750 places 835 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
Devon

Postcode EX33 2BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138041).

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.