School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St James School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named St James School as their first choice did not get a place: 189 put it first and 182 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

189 first preferences for 191 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St James School

There is no published appeal success rate for St James 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 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

St James School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 St James 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 162 first choices 187 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 188 first choices 194 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 219 first choices 192 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 235 first choices 194 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 244 first choices 194 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 241 first choices 188 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 193 first choices 181 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 210 first choices 192 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 227 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 235 first choices 182 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 220 first choices 187 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 189 first choices 191 places
First preferences per place at St James School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 191 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St James School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 187 162 160 0.87
2016/17 194 188 185 0.97
2017/18 192 219 188 1.14
2018/19 194 235 189 1.21
2019/20 194 244 184 1.26
2020/21 188 241 183 1.28
2021/22 181 193 172 1.07
2022/23 192 210 175 1.09
2023/24 177 227 165 1.28
2024/25 182 235 176 1.29
2025/26 187 220 183 1.18
2026/27 191 189 182 0.99

Places offered

191

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

355 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.3%

182 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 191 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 113507.

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

953

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

985

103.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

32

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 St James 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 St James School 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St James School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 953 places 624 on roll 2010/11 953 places 613 on roll 2011/12 953 places 638 on roll 2012/13 953 places 662 on roll 2013/14 953 places 648 on roll 2014/15 953 places 700 on roll 2015/16 953 places 783 on roll 2016/17 953 places 826 on roll 2017/18 953 places 869 on roll 2018/19 953 places 909 on roll 2020/21 953 places 956 on roll 2021/22 953 places 968 on roll 2022/23 953 places 977 on roll 2023/24 953 places 979 on roll 2024/25 953 places 985 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 EX4 8NN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142805).

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.