School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Noadswood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Noadswood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 201 and 243 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

243 first preferences for 201 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Noadswood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Noadswood 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

Noadswood School 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 Noadswood 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 1 per place 193 first choices 193 places 2016/17 1 per place 208 first choices 208 places 2017/18 1 per place 209 first choices 209 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 191 first choices 195 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 181 first choices 182 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 152 first choices 157 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 187 first choices 190 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 159 first choices 161 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 223 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 234 first choices 229 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 213 first choices 215 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 243 first choices 201 places
First preferences per place at Noadswood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 243 first preferences for 201 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Noadswood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 193 193 193 1
2016/17 208 208 208 1
2017/18 209 209 209 1
2018/19 195 191 191 0.98
2019/20 182 181 181 0.99
2020/21 157 152 152 0.97
2021/22 190 187 187 0.98
2022/23 161 159 159 0.99
2023/24 219 223 214 1.02
2024/25 229 234 228 1.02
2025/26 215 213 213 0.99
2026/27 201 243 200 1.21

Places offered

201

in 2026/27

Named first choice

243

320 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.3%

200 of 243

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 201 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

1,124

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,051

93.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

73

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 Noadswood 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 Noadswood School reported 73 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.5% 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 Noadswood School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,124 places 1,071 on roll 2012/13 1,124 places 1,043 on roll 2013/14 1,125 places 1,013 on roll 2014/15 1,124 places 998 on roll 2015/16 1,124 places 977 on roll 2016/17 1,124 places 1,007 on roll 2017/18 1,124 places 1,002 on roll 2018/19 1,124 places 1,011 on roll 2020/21 1,124 places 961 on roll 2021/22 1,124 places 959 on roll 2022/23 1,124 places 946 on roll 2023/24 1,124 places 982 on roll 2024/25 1,124 places 1,051 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 SO45 4ZF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137125).

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.