School admission appeals in Dorset
Dorset heard 85 school admission appeals in 2026, and 28 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Dorset as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Dorset success rate has run 15.9 percentage points higher than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Dorset were upheld
124 of 351 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
120
by parents in Dorset
Appeals heard by a panel
85
71% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
28
32.9% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
50.7% of the primary appeals heard in Dorset were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Dorset, 0% of infant class size appeals were upheld (0 of 37 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Dorset
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Dorset rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Dorset
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 278 | 112 | 40.3% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 73 | 12 | 16.4% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 37 | 0 | 0% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Dorset, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Dorset | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 251 | 114 | 45.4% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 366 | 145 | 39.6% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 242 | 99 | 40.9% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 212 | 86 | 40.6% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 141 | 45 | 31.9% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 82 | 13 | 15.9% | 19% |
| 2022 | 62 | 31 | 50% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 124 | 43 | 34.7% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 141 | 59 | 41.8% | 20% |
| 2025 | 125 | 37 | 29.6% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 85 | 28 | 32.9% | 18.5% |
How Dorset compares
Success rate ranking
14 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
101 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 351 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Before Dorset existed
Became a unitary authority; ONS code changed but the boundary and the time series did not.
Schools in Dorset
Dorset has 148 state-funded mainstream schools — 119 primary, 28 secondary and 1 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Dorchester, Wimborne, Weymouth and Blandford Forum.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Dorset schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 5 secondary and 44 primary schools in Dorset →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Gryphon School | 234 | 265 | 1.13 |
| Gillingham School | 265 | 284 | 1.07 |
| Budmouth Academy Weymouth | 235 | 234 | 1 |
| Beaminster School | 120 | 119 | 0.99 |
| Lytchett Minster School | 257 | 253 | 0.98 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rushcombe First School | 60 | 85 | 1.42 |
| The Prince of Wales School | 29 | 37 | 1.28 |
| St Nicholas and St Laurence Church of England Primary School | 30 | 38 | 1.27 |
| Trent Young's CofE Primary School | 20 | 25 | 1.25 |
| Henbury View First School | 30 | 36 | 1.20 |
| Trinity Church of England First School | 30 | 36 | 1.20 |
| Wimborne First School and Nursery | 59 | 71 | 1.20 |
| Radipole Primary School | 58 | 68 | 1.17 |
| Parley First School | 58 | 66 | 1.14 |
| St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester | 29 | 33 | 1.14 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Dorset
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 5 objections about schools in Dorset, and found the arrangements did not comply in 4.
Too few to quote as a rate — the national figure is 68.3%.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Dorset County Council local authority schools | 7 July 2022 | Did not comply |
| Dorset Studio School | 28 June 2022 | Did not comply |
| Colehill First School | 28 April 2022 | Did not comply |
| Wey Valley School | 7 September 2018 | Did not comply |
| Twynham School | 26 July 2018 | Complied |
Dorset does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.