School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Uffculme School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Uffculme School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 259 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

259 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Uffculme School

There is no published appeal success rate for Uffculme 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

Uffculme School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Uffculme 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 1.28 per place 240 first choices 187 places 2016/17 1.18 per place 244 first choices 207 places 2017/18 1.32 per place 273 first choices 207 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 262 first choices 202 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 258 first choices 205 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 253 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 241 first choices 203 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 226 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.4 per place 279 first choices 200 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 255 first choices 213 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 265 first choices 202 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 259 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at Uffculme School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 259 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Uffculme School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 187 240 187 1.28
2016/17 207 244 207 1.18
2017/18 207 273 205 1.32
2018/19 202 262 202 1.3
2019/20 205 258 205 1.26
2020/21 208 253 208 1.22
2021/22 203 241 202 1.19
2022/23 206 226 206 1.1
2023/24 200 279 200 1.4
2024/25 213 255 213 1.2
2025/26 202 265 201 1.31
2026/27 207 259 207 1.25

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

259

370 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.9%

207 of 259

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 207 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

1,048

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,086

103.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

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 Uffculme 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 Uffculme 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 Uffculme School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 940 places 940 on roll 2011/12 940 places 949 on roll 2012/13 940 places 953 on roll 2013/14 947 places 967 on roll 2014/15 940 places 971 on roll 2015/16 940 places 983 on roll 2016/17 1,007 places 1,015 on roll 2017/18 940 places 1,027 on roll 2018/19 940 places 1,032 on roll 2020/21 1,048 places 1,060 on roll 2021/22 1,048 places 1,045 on roll 2022/23 1,048 places 1,066 on roll 2023/24 1,048 places 1,068 on roll 2024/25 1,048 places 1,086 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 EX15 3AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136287).

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.