School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holsworthy Community College?

In 2026/27, Holsworthy Community College offered 97 places and 95 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.

0.98

first choices for every place available

95 first preferences for 97 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holsworthy Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Holsworthy Community 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 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

Holsworthy Community College turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Holsworthy Community 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 0.93 per place 90 first choices 97 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 105 first choices 113 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 91 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 114 first choices 118 places 2019/20 1 per place 85 first choices 85 places 2020/21 1 per place 80 first choices 80 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 102 first choices 105 places 2022/23 1 per place 93 first choices 93 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 108 first choices 109 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 123 first choices 119 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 106 first choices 110 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 95 first choices 97 places
First preferences per place at Holsworthy Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 97 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holsworthy Community 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 97 90 90 0.93
2016/17 113 105 105 0.93
2017/18 101 91 91 0.9
2018/19 118 114 114 0.97
2019/20 85 85 85 1
2020/21 80 80 80 1
2021/22 105 102 102 0.97
2022/23 93 93 93 1
2023/24 109 108 108 0.99
2024/25 119 123 119 1.03
2025/26 110 106 106 0.96
2026/27 97 95 95 0.98

Places offered

97

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

120 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

95 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

11%

11 of 97 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 113511.

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

527

70.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

223

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 Holsworthy Community 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 Holsworthy Community College reported 223 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 70.3% 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 Holsworthy Community College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 726 places 707 on roll 2010/11 726 places 684 on roll 2011/12 750 places 658 on roll 2012/13 750 places 677 on roll 2013/14 750 places 632 on roll 2014/15 750 places 598 on roll 2015/16 750 places 574 on roll 2016/17 750 places 566 on roll 2017/18 750 places 533 on roll 2018/19 750 places 531 on roll 2020/21 750 places 503 on roll 2021/22 600 places 507 on roll 2022/23 600 places 512 on roll 2023/24 750 places 517 on roll 2024/25 750 places 527 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 EX22 6JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145343).

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.