School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Gildredge House?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Gildredge House as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 90 and 93 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

93 first preferences for 90 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Gildredge House

There is no published appeal success rate for Gildredge House, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for East Sussex 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 East Sussex, 24.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 632 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 East Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not East Sussex 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

Gildredge House turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 4 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Gildredge House, 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 1.63 per place 189 first choices 116 places 2016/17 1.69 per place 191 first choices 113 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 168 first choices 141 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 134 first choices 142 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 179 first choices 141 places 2020/21 1.18 per place 98 first choices 83 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 79 first choices 84 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 75 first choices 84 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 82 first choices 90 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 87 first choices 88 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 84 first choices 90 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 93 first choices 90 places
First preferences per place at Gildredge House. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 93 first preferences for 90 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Gildredge House, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 189 116 1.63
2016/17 113 191 110 1.69
2017/18 141 168 138 1.19
2018/19 142 134 134 0.94
2019/20 141 179 137 1.27
2020/21 83 98 76 1.18
2021/22 84 79 70 0.94
2022/23 84 75 64 0.89
2023/24 90 82 63 0.91
2024/25 88 87 64 0.99
2025/26 90 84 64 0.93
2026/27 90 93 69 1.03

Places offered

90

in 2026/27

Named first choice

93

356 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.2%

69 of 93

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 90 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

1,232

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,163

94.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

69

across Years 7 to 11

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 Gildredge House 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 Gildredge House reported 69 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.4% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Gildredge House from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,192 places 177 on roll 2014/15 1,232 places 357 on roll 2015/16 1,232 places 583 on roll 2016/17 1,232 places 847 on roll 2017/18 1,232 places 1,017 on roll 2018/19 1,232 places 1,097 on roll 2020/21 1,232 places 1,230 on roll 2021/22 1,232 places 1,227 on roll 2022/23 1,232 places 1,216 on roll 2023/24 1,232 places 1,181 on roll 2024/25 1,232 places 1,163 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
East Sussex

Postcode BN20 8AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139796).

Other contested secondary schools in East Sussex

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.