School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at John Hanson Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 54 families who named John Hanson Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 182 and 223 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

223 first preferences for 182 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at John Hanson Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for John Hanson 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

John Hanson Community School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 John Hanson 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 0.99 per place 142 first choices 144 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 145 first choices 158 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 132 first choices 145 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 154 first choices 173 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 176 first choices 222 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 191 first choices 196 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 161 first choices 202 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 221 first choices 198 places 2023/24 1.33 per place 260 first choices 195 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 231 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.22 per place 219 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 223 first choices 182 places
First preferences per place at John Hanson Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 182 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at John Hanson 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
2015/16 144 142 141 0.99
2016/17 158 145 145 0.92
2017/18 145 132 132 0.91
2018/19 173 154 154 0.89
2019/20 222 176 176 0.79
2020/21 196 191 183 0.97
2021/22 202 161 161 0.8
2022/23 198 221 185 1.12
2023/24 195 260 185 1.33
2024/25 198 231 192 1.17
2025/26 180 219 175 1.22
2026/27 182 223 169 1.23

Places offered

182

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

460 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.8%

169 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 182 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

980

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

991

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

11

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 John Hanson 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 John Hanson 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 John Hanson Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 980 places 961 on roll 2010/11 980 places 957 on roll 2011/12 985 places 908 on roll 2012/13 980 places 879 on roll 2013/14 980 places 882 on roll 2014/15 980 places 866 on roll 2015/16 980 places 830 on roll 2016/17 980 places 848 on roll 2017/18 980 places 855 on roll 2018/19 980 places 885 on roll 2020/21 980 places 987 on roll 2021/22 980 places 989 on roll 2022/23 980 places 1,007 on roll 2023/24 980 places 1,006 on roll 2024/25 980 places 991 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 SP10 3PB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116405).

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.