School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Thomas Rich's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 68 families who named Sir Thomas Rich's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 194 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

194 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Thomas Rich's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Thomas Rich's 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

Sir Thomas Rich's School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Sir Thomas Rich's 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 1.19 per place 125 first choices 105 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 119 first choices 118 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 153 first choices 119 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 178 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 174 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 152 first choices 150 places 2021/22 1.54 per place 231 first choices 150 places 2022/23 1.34 per place 198 first choices 148 places 2023/24 1.53 per place 227 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.56 per place 223 first choices 143 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 196 first choices 148 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 194 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Sir Thomas Rich's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 194 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Thomas Rich's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 105 125 83 1.19
2016/17 118 119 103 1.01
2017/18 119 153 114 1.29
2018/19 149 178 135 1.19
2019/20 150 174 130 1.16
2020/21 150 152 130 1.01
2021/22 150 231 74 1.54
2022/23 148 198 127 1.34
2023/24 148 227 127 1.53
2024/25 143 223 119 1.56
2025/26 148 196 123 1.32
2026/27 150 194 126 1.29

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

194

424 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.9%

126 of 194

Offers to families outside the council

53%

80 of 150 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

783

104.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

33

reported as full or beyond

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 Sir Thomas Rich's 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 Sir Thomas Rich's 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sir Thomas Rich's School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 777 places 812 on roll 2011/12 777 places 862 on roll 2012/13 777 places 892 on roll 2013/14 777 places 903 on roll 2014/15 962 places 934 on roll 2015/16 962 places 996 on roll 2016/17 962 places 1,008 on roll 2017/18 962 places 1,012 on roll 2018/19 962 places 1,053 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,099 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,155 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,225 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,267 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,246 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. Sir Thomas Rich's School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sir Thomas Rich's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 September 2022 No fault found ADA3930
11 October 2021 No fault found ADA3777

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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Gloucestershire

Postcode GL2 0LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136306).

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.