School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dartmouth Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Dartmouth Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 36 and 45 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

45 first preferences for 36 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dartmouth Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Dartmouth 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

Dartmouth Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Dartmouth 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 0.91 per place 43 first choices 47 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 35 first choices 46 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 26 first choices 32 places 2018/19 0.73 per place 32 first choices 44 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 40 first choices 43 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 50 first choices 52 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 40 first choices 47 places 2022/23 0.57 per place 32 first choices 56 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 43 first choices 34 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 31 first choices 34 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 33 first choices 36 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 45 first choices 36 places
First preferences per place at Dartmouth Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 45 first preferences for 36 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dartmouth 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 47 43 42 0.91
2016/17 46 35 35 0.76
2017/18 32 26 26 0.81
2018/19 44 32 32 0.73
2019/20 43 40 40 0.93
2020/21 52 50 50 0.96
2021/22 47 40 40 0.85
2022/23 56 32 32 0.57
2023/24 34 43 31 1.26
2024/25 34 31 27 0.91
2025/26 36 33 33 0.92
2026/27 36 45 34 1.25

Places offered

36

in 2026/27

Named first choice

45

71 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.6%

34 of 45

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 36 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

810

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

420

51.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

390

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 Dartmouth 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 Dartmouth Academy reported 390 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 51.9% 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 Dartmouth Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 936 places 485 on roll 2011/12 654 places 473 on roll 2012/13 654 places 485 on roll 2013/14 811 places 495 on roll 2014/15 811 places 490 on roll 2015/16 811 places 444 on roll 2016/17 811 places 408 on roll 2017/18 811 places 417 on roll 2018/19 811 places 413 on roll 2020/21 810 places 408 on roll 2021/22 810 places 388 on roll 2022/23 810 places 379 on roll 2023/24 810 places 418 on roll 2024/25 810 places 420 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Devon

Postcode TQ6 9HW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136200).

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.