School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Teign School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Teign School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 202 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

first choices for every place available

202 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Teign School

There is no published appeal success rate for Teign 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

Teign School 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 Teign 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 0.98 per place 197 first choices 200 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 169 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 156 first choices 165 places 2018/19 1 per place 156 first choices 156 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 174 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 155 first choices 196 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 168 first choices 197 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 192 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 208 first choices 194 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 249 first choices 231 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 192 first choices 201 places 2026/27 1 per place 202 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at Teign School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Teign School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 200 197 196 0.98
2016/17 175 169 167 0.97
2017/18 165 156 156 0.95
2018/19 156 156 154 1
2019/20 178 174 174 0.98
2020/21 196 155 154 0.79
2021/22 197 168 168 0.85
2022/23 205 192 189 0.94
2023/24 194 208 184 1.07
2024/25 231 249 225 1.08
2025/26 201 192 192 0.96
2026/27 203 202 198 1

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

314 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98%

198 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 203 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

1,129

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,003

88.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

126

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

224

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 Teign 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 Teign School reported 126 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.8% 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 Teign School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,352 places 1,342 on roll 2011/12 1,380 places 1,341 on roll 2012/13 1,295 places 1,301 on roll 2013/14 1,380 places 1,212 on roll 2014/15 1,380 places 1,171 on roll 2015/16 1,380 places 1,117 on roll 2016/17 1,380 places 1,073 on roll 2017/18 1,380 places 991 on roll 2018/19 1,380 places 933 on roll 2020/21 1,353 places 964 on roll 2021/22 1,353 places 1,016 on roll 2022/23 1,353 places 1,024 on roll 2023/24 1,353 places 1,038 on roll 2024/25 1,353 places 1,079 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 TQ12 3JG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136494).

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.