School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fareham Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Fareham Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 167 and 168 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

168 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fareham Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Fareham Academy, 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

Fareham Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Fareham Academy, 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 88 first choices 98 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 130 first choices 144 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 152 first choices 155 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 139 first choices 147 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 177 first choices 171 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 151 first choices 164 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 163 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 155 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 155 first choices 176 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 142 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 178 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 168 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at Fareham Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fareham Academy, 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 98 88 88 0.9
2016/17 144 130 130 0.9
2017/18 155 152 152 0.98
2018/19 147 139 139 0.95
2019/20 171 177 165 1.04
2020/21 164 151 151 0.92
2021/22 174 163 163 0.94
2022/23 172 155 155 0.9
2023/24 176 155 155 0.88
2024/25 170 142 142 0.84
2025/26 174 178 172 1.02
2026/27 167 168 145 1.01

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

390 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.3%

145 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 167 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

882

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

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 Fareham Academy 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 Fareham Academy reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fareham Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 975 places 655 on roll 2014/15 947 places 632 on roll 2015/16 944 places 625 on roll 2016/17 944 places 711 on roll 2017/18 944 places 719 on roll 2018/19 944 places 764 on roll 2020/21 900 places 844 on roll 2021/22 900 places 844 on roll 2022/23 900 places 861 on roll 2023/24 900 places 882 on roll 2024/25 900 places 882 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 PO14 1JJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140069).

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.