School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Amery Hill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Amery Hill School as their first choice did not get a place: 187 put it first and 184 of them were offered one.

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

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

187 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Amery Hill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Amery Hill 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

Amery Hill School turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Amery Hill 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 0.9 per place 144 first choices 160 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 191 first choices 196 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 154 first choices 161 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 207 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 196 first choices 195 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 216 first choices 196 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 215 first choices 200 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 164 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 207 first choices 197 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 214 first choices 193 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 205 first choices 183 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 187 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at Amery Hill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 187 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Amery Hill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 160 144 144 0.9
2016/17 196 191 191 0.97
2017/18 161 154 154 0.96
2018/19 216 207 207 0.96
2019/20 195 196 185 1.01
2020/21 196 216 196 1.1
2021/22 200 215 198 1.07
2022/23 173 164 164 0.95
2023/24 197 207 188 1.05
2024/25 193 214 193 1.11
2025/26 183 205 182 1.12
2026/27 188 187 184 0.99

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

187

349 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.4%

184 of 187

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 188 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Amery Hill School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Amery Hill School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children or children who were previously looked after (see definition i).
2 Children or families with an exceptional medical and/or social need. Each application wishing to be considered under this criterion must include supporting evidence from an independent professional such as a doctor and/or consultant for medical needs or a social worker, health visitor, housing officer, the police or probation officer for social needs. This evidence must confirm the child or family’s medical or social need and be clear why those needs can only be met at this school, rather than any other (see definition ii). […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Children living in the catchment area (see definition iv) of Amery Hill School who at the time of application have a sibling (see definition v) on the roll of the school who will still be on roll at the time of admission.
4 Other children living in the catchment area of Amery Hill School.
5 Children living out of the catchment area who at the time of application have a sibling (see definition v) on the roll of Amery Hill School who will still be on roll at the time of admission.
6 Children living out of the catchment area who at the time of application are on the roll of a linked primary school. These are: • Anstey Junior School • The Butts Primary School • Chawton Church of England Primary School • Medstead Church of England Primary School • Selborne Church of England Primary School • St Lawrence Church of England Primary School • St Mary's Bentworth Church of England Primary School
7 Other Children.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Amery Hill School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

993

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

7

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 Amery Hill 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 Amery Hill School reported 7 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Amery Hill School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,000 places 898 on roll 2012/13 1,000 places 900 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 856 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 857 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 817 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 820 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 847 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 919 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 961 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 965 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 994 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 986 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 993 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
Hampshire

Postcode GU34 2BZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137535).

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.