School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ratton School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named Ratton School as their first choice did not get a place: 217 put it first and 180 of them were offered one.

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

37

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

217 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ratton School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ratton 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 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

Ratton School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 2 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 Ratton 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 0.88 per place 184 first choices 209 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 207 first choices 234 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 259 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 258 first choices 241 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 194 first choices 223 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 179 first choices 242 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 179 first choices 243 places 2022/23 0.63 per place 147 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 184 first choices 243 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 213 first choices 239 places 2025/26 0.8 per place 193 first choices 241 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 217 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at Ratton School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 217 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ratton School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 184 184 0.88
2016/17 234 207 206 0.88
2017/18 240 259 219 1.08
2018/19 241 258 235 1.07
2019/20 223 194 193 0.87
2020/21 242 179 170 0.74
2021/22 243 179 179 0.74
2022/23 234 147 147 0.63
2023/24 243 184 172 0.76
2024/25 239 213 164 0.89
2025/26 241 193 175 0.8
2026/27 237 217 180 0.92

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

217

644 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.9%

180 of 217

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 237 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

1,215

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,191

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

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 Ratton 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 Ratton School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ratton School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,215 places 1,213 on roll 2013/14 1,215 places 1,203 on roll 2014/15 1,215 places 1,168 on roll 2015/16 1,215 places 1,154 on roll 2016/17 1,215 places 1,168 on roll 2017/18 1,215 places 1,161 on roll 2018/19 1,215 places 1,179 on roll 2020/21 1,215 places 1,177 on roll 2021/22 1,215 places 1,185 on roll 2022/23 1,215 places 1,191 on roll 2023/24 1,215 places 1,183 on roll 2024/25 1,215 places 1,191 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 BN21 2XR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138474).

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.