School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Park Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Park Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 188 and 199 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Park Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Park 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

Park Community School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Park 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 0.98 per place 172 first choices 176 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 182 first choices 186 places 2017/18 1 per place 154 first choices 154 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 178 first choices 180 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 147 first choices 151 places 2020/21 1 per place 195 first choices 195 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 170 first choices 173 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 186 first choices 191 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 166 first choices 182 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 173 first choices 181 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 200 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 199 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at Park Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Park 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
2015/16 176 172 172 0.98
2016/17 186 182 182 0.98
2017/18 154 154 154 1
2018/19 180 178 178 0.99
2019/20 151 147 147 0.97
2020/21 195 195 195 1
2021/22 173 170 170 0.98
2022/23 191 186 186 0.97
2023/24 182 166 166 0.91
2024/25 181 173 173 0.96
2025/26 205 200 190 0.98
2026/27 188 199 180 1.06

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

244 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.5%

180 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 188 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

979

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

992

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

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 Park 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 Park 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 Park Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 893 on roll 2010/11 900 places 893 on roll 2011/12 900 places 880 on roll 2012/13 900 places 884 on roll 2013/14 900 places 885 on roll 2014/15 900 places 894 on roll 2015/16 900 places 863 on roll 2016/17 900 places 863 on roll 2017/18 979 places 856 on roll 2018/19 979 places 885 on roll 2020/21 979 places 902 on roll 2021/22 979 places 906 on roll 2022/23 979 places 954 on roll 2023/24 979 places 969 on roll 2024/25 979 places 992 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 PO9 4BU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116473).

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.