School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brighton Hill Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Brighton Hill Community School as their first choice did not get a place: 240 put it first and 215 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.

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

240 first preferences for 242 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brighton Hill Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Brighton Hill Community 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

Brighton Hill Community School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 1 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 Brighton Hill Community 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 0.96 per place 113 first choices 118 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 93 first choices 96 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 105 first choices 114 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 163 first choices 199 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 201 first choices 216 places 2020/21 1 per place 255 first choices 254 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 257 first choices 254 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 280 first choices 254 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 271 first choices 248 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 332 first choices 249 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 268 first choices 240 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 240 first choices 242 places
First preferences per place at Brighton Hill Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 240 first preferences for 242 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brighton Hill Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 118 113 113 0.96
2016/17 96 93 93 0.97
2017/18 114 105 105 0.92
2018/19 199 163 163 0.82
2019/20 216 201 201 0.93
2020/21 254 255 227 1
2021/22 254 257 233 1.01
2022/23 254 280 239 1.1
2023/24 248 271 235 1.09
2024/25 249 332 246 1.33
2025/26 240 268 234 1.12
2026/27 242 240 215 0.99

Places offered

242

in 2026/27

Named first choice

240

479 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.6%

215 of 240

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 242 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 116441.

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

1,258

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,274

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

16

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 Brighton Hill Community 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 Brighton Hill Community 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 Brighton Hill Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,259 places 1,218 on roll 2010/11 1,262 places 1,202 on roll 2011/12 1,262 places 1,085 on roll 2012/13 1,262 places 929 on roll 2013/14 1,262 places 799 on roll 2014/15 1,262 places 650 on roll 2015/16 1,262 places 571 on roll 2016/17 1,262 places 519 on roll 2017/18 1,203 places 575 on roll 2018/19 1,203 places 683 on roll 2020/21 1,203 places 958 on roll 2021/22 1,203 places 1,085 on roll 2022/23 1,203 places 1,205 on roll 2023/24 1,258 places 1,264 on roll 2024/25 1,258 places 1,274 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 RG22 4HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149707).

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.