School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Barnwood Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Barnwood Park School as their first choice did not get a place: 156 put it first and 122 of them were offered one.

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

34

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

156 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Barnwood Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Barnwood Park 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 Gloucestershire 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 Gloucestershire, 26.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 424 of 1,598 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 Gloucestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Gloucestershire 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

Barnwood Park School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 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 Barnwood Park 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 0.71 per place 105 first choices 147 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 89 first choices 123 places 2017/18 0.7 per place 105 first choices 149 places 2018/19 1.4 per place 207 first choices 148 places 2019/20 1.59 per place 272 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.47 per place 252 first choices 171 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 226 first choices 169 places 2022/23 1.71 per place 278 first choices 163 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 217 first choices 158 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 185 first choices 169 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 161 first choices 198 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 156 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Barnwood Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 156 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Barnwood Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 105 105 0.71
2016/17 123 89 89 0.72
2017/18 149 105 105 0.7
2018/19 148 207 123 1.4
2019/20 171 272 133 1.59
2020/21 171 252 147 1.47
2021/22 169 226 137 1.34
2022/23 163 278 150 1.71
2023/24 158 217 114 1.37
2024/25 169 185 138 1.09
2025/26 198 161 128 0.81
2026/27 164 156 122 0.95

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

156

628 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.2%

122 of 156

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 164 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 115720.

How close you had to live

Barnwood Park School filled its places in 2025, and 2,334m — 1.45 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the distance criterion.

Last place offered at

1.45 mi

2,334 metres, 2025

Under criterion

Distance

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Gloucestershire Council, allocation statistics for 2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

876

97.3% 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 Barnwood Park 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 Barnwood Park School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.3% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Barnwood Park School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 710 on roll 2010/11 750 places 739 on roll 2011/12 750 places 728 on roll 2012/13 750 places 725 on roll 2013/14 750 places 660 on roll 2014/15 750 places 603 on roll 2015/16 750 places 585 on roll 2016/17 750 places 581 on roll 2017/18 750 places 616 on roll 2018/19 750 places 670 on roll 2020/21 900 places 784 on roll 2021/22 900 places 836 on roll 2022/23 900 places 869 on roll 2023/24 900 places 881 on roll 2024/25 900 places 876 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
Gloucestershire

Postcode GL4 3QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151538).

Other contested secondary schools in Gloucestershire

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.