School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Robert May's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Robert May's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 269 and 283 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

283 first preferences for 269 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Robert May's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Robert May's 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

Robert May's School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Robert May's 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 1.19 per place 283 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 310 first choices 268 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 298 first choices 238 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 287 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 283 first choices 264 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 275 first choices 265 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 313 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 292 first choices 258 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 294 first choices 254 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 268 first choices 262 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 295 first choices 292 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 283 first choices 269 places
First preferences per place at Robert May's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 283 first preferences for 269 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Robert May's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 283 234 1.19
2016/17 268 310 266 1.16
2017/18 238 298 238 1.25
2018/19 238 287 235 1.21
2019/20 264 283 261 1.07
2020/21 265 275 254 1.04
2021/22 268 313 261 1.17
2022/23 258 292 254 1.13
2023/24 254 294 246 1.16
2024/25 262 268 249 1.02
2025/26 292 295 274 1.01
2026/27 269 283 256 1.05

Places offered

269

in 2026/27

Named first choice

283

534 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.5%

256 of 283

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 269 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,315

97.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

35

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 Robert May's 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 Robert May's School reported 35 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.4% 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 Robert May's School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,200 places 1,207 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,204 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,193 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,199 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,200 on roll 2016/17 1,231 places 1,238 on roll 2017/18 1,231 places 1,234 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,237 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,281 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,286 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,306 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,318 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,315 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 RG29 1NA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138135).

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.