School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alderwood School?

In 2026/27, Alderwood School offered 117 places and 65 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Hampshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

0.56

first choices for every place available

65 first preferences for 117 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alderwood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alderwood 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 Hampshire 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 Hampshire, 34.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 310 of 903 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 Hampshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hampshire 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

Alderwood School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 9 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Alderwood School, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.87 per place 68 first choices 78 places 2019/20 0.6 per place 55 first choices 92 places 2020/21 0.53 per place 62 first choices 116 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 71 first choices 106 places 2022/23 0.61 per place 46 first choices 76 places 2023/24 0.54 per place 64 first choices 119 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 70 first choices 84 places 2025/26 0.49 per place 58 first choices 119 places 2026/27 0.56 per place 65 first choices 117 places
First preferences per place at Alderwood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 65 first preferences for 117 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alderwood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 78 68 68 0.87
2019/20 92 55 55 0.6
2020/21 116 62 62 0.53
2021/22 106 71 71 0.67
2022/23 76 46 46 0.61
2023/24 119 64 64 0.54
2024/25 84 70 60 0.83
2025/26 119 58 58 0.49
2026/27 117 65 65 0.56

Places offered

117

in 2026/27

Named first choice

65

167 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

65 of 65

Offers to families outside the council

14%

12 of 87 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

1,480

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,510

102% of capacity

Over its capacity by

30

reported as full or beyond

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 Alderwood 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 Alderwood 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Alderwood School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 270 places 206 on roll 2010/11 270 places 226 on roll 2011/12 270 places 250 on roll 2012/13 270 places 268 on roll 2013/14 270 places 259 on roll 2014/15 270 places 263 on roll 2015/16 270 places 263 on roll 2016/17 1,480 places 294 on roll 2017/18 1,540 places 1,224 on roll 2018/19 1,540 places 1,318 on roll 2020/21 1,540 places 1,407 on roll 2021/22 1,540 places 1,447 on roll 2022/23 1,480 places 1,471 on roll 2023/24 1,480 places 1,507 on roll 2024/25 1,480 places 1,510 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
Hampshire

Postcode GU12 4RZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116234).

Other contested secondary schools in Hampshire

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.