School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Seaford Head School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Seaford Head School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 231 and 245 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.

1.06

first choices for every place available

245 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Seaford Head School

There is no published appeal success rate for Seaford Head 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

Seaford Head School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Seaford Head 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 1.03 per place 243 first choices 236 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 236 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 254 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 217 first choices 232 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 293 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 256 first choices 231 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 304 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 279 first choices 237 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 290 first choices 256 places 2024/25 1.27 per place 288 first choices 227 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 256 first choices 230 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 245 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at Seaford Head School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 245 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Seaford Head School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 236 243 228 1.03
2016/17 238 236 227 0.99
2017/18 237 254 230 1.07
2018/19 232 217 217 0.94
2019/20 236 293 234 1.24
2020/21 231 256 230 1.11
2021/22 238 304 237 1.28
2022/23 237 279 235 1.18
2023/24 256 290 253 1.13
2024/25 227 288 223 1.27
2025/26 230 256 230 1.11
2026/27 231 245 226 1.06

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

245

413 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.2%

226 of 245

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 231 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

1,220

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,220

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

355

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 Seaford Head 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 Seaford Head 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Seaford Head School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 1,070 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,080 on roll 2014/15 1,555 places 1,178 on roll 2015/16 1,555 places 1,234 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,250 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,292 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,298 on roll 2020/21 1,380 places 1,401 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,382 on roll 2022/23 1,555 places 1,380 on roll 2023/24 1,575 places 1,406 on roll 2024/25 1,575 places 1,435 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Seaford Head School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Seaford Head School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 July 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2420

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 BN25 4LX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138473).

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.