School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King's Academy Ringmer?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named King's Academy Ringmer as their first choice did not get a place: 140 put it first and 121 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in East Sussex actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

140 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King's Academy Ringmer

There is no published appeal success rate for King's Academy Ringmer, 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

King's Academy Ringmer turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 1 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 King's Academy Ringmer, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.96 per place 74 first choices 77 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 83 first choices 92 places 2019/20 0.56 per place 55 first choices 99 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 100 first choices 112 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 115 first choices 137 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 127 first choices 146 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 132 first choices 144 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 158 first choices 149 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 134 first choices 148 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 140 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at King's Academy Ringmer. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 140 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King's Academy Ringmer, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 77 74 74 0.96
2018/19 92 83 82 0.9
2019/20 99 55 55 0.56
2020/21 112 100 100 0.89
2021/22 137 115 115 0.84
2022/23 146 127 127 0.87
2023/24 144 132 132 0.92
2024/25 149 158 137 1.06
2025/26 148 134 124 0.91
2026/27 149 140 121 0.94

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

140

476 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.4%

121 of 140

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 149 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

630

58.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

450

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 King's Academy Ringmer 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 King's Academy Ringmer reported 450 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 58.3% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King's Academy Ringmer from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,050 places 497 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 430 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 420 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 460 on roll 2021/22 1,080 places 508 on roll 2022/23 1,080 places 564 on roll 2023/24 1,080 places 598 on roll 2024/25 1,080 places 630 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
East Sussex

Postcode BN8 5RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144505).

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.