School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The King's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named The King's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 167 and 218 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

218 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The King's School

There is no published appeal success rate for The King's 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

The King's School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 The King's 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 1.19 per place 215 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.21 per place 216 first choices 179 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 202 first choices 169 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 207 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 213 first choices 177 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 174 first choices 176 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 188 first choices 166 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 217 first choices 168 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 230 first choices 168 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 193 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.42 per place 235 first choices 165 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 218 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at The King's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 218 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The King's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 215 179 1.19
2016/17 179 216 173 1.21
2017/18 169 202 167 1.2
2018/19 178 207 175 1.16
2019/20 177 213 174 1.2
2020/21 176 174 165 0.99
2021/22 166 188 163 1.13
2022/23 168 217 163 1.29
2023/24 168 230 162 1.37
2024/25 158 193 154 1.22
2025/26 165 235 164 1.42
2026/27 167 218 165 1.31

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

218

374 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.7%

165 of 218

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 167 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

853

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

902

105.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

49

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 The King's 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 The King's 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The King's School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,103 places 1,102 on roll 2011/12 1,150 places 1,128 on roll 2012/13 1,150 places 1,131 on roll 2013/14 1,107 places 1,135 on roll 2014/15 1,107 places 1,137 on roll 2015/16 1,107 places 1,128 on roll 2016/17 1,107 places 1,133 on roll 2017/18 1,107 places 1,098 on roll 2018/19 1,107 places 1,086 on roll 2020/21 1,103 places 1,122 on roll 2021/22 1,103 places 1,104 on roll 2022/23 1,103 places 1,109 on roll 2023/24 1,103 places 1,113 on roll 2024/25 1,103 places 1,108 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 EX11 1RA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136673).

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.