School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Uckfield College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 42 families who named Uckfield College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 267 and 298 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.

1.12

first choices for every place available

298 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Uckfield College

There is no published appeal success rate for Uckfield College, 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

Uckfield College turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Uckfield College, 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 1.06 per place 281 first choices 266 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 265 first choices 261 places 2017/18 1.05 per place 276 first choices 263 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 254 first choices 259 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 303 first choices 277 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 223 first choices 243 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 232 first choices 260 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 246 first choices 260 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 269 first choices 265 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 252 first choices 266 places 2025/26 1.22 per place 325 first choices 266 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 298 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at Uckfield College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 298 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Uckfield College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 266 281 262 1.06
2016/17 261 265 257 1.02
2017/18 263 276 261 1.05
2018/19 259 254 254 0.98
2019/20 277 303 275 1.09
2020/21 243 223 223 0.92
2021/22 260 232 232 0.89
2022/23 260 246 246 0.95
2023/24 265 269 260 1.02
2024/25 266 252 252 0.95
2025/26 266 325 256 1.22
2026/27 267 298 256 1.12

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

298

513 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.9%

256 of 298

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 267 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,294

95.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

56

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Uckfield College 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 Uckfield College reported 56 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Uckfield College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,696 places 1,673 on roll 2010/11 1,701 places 1,731 on roll 2011/12 1,701 places 1,720 on roll 2012/13 1,701 places 1,686 on roll 2013/14 1,701 places 1,684 on roll 2014/15 1,701 places 1,716 on roll 2015/16 1,723 places 1,718 on roll 2016/17 1,750 places 1,677 on roll 2017/18 1,750 places 1,666 on roll 2018/19 1,750 places 1,675 on roll 2020/21 1,750 places 1,617 on roll 2021/22 1,750 places 1,552 on roll 2022/23 1,750 places 1,570 on roll 2023/24 1,750 places 1,615 on roll 2024/25 1,750 places 1,593 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
East Sussex

Postcode TN22 3DJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114590).

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.