School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Burgate School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named The Burgate School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 187 and 205 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

205 first preferences for 187 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Burgate School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for The Burgate School and Sixth Form, 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

The Burgate School and Sixth Form 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 The Burgate School and Sixth Form, 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 0.92 per place 131 first choices 143 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 148 first choices 158 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 156 first choices 155 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 128 first choices 157 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 108 first choices 124 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 175 first choices 159 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 148 first choices 179 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 164 first choices 186 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 147 first choices 159 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 179 first choices 180 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 136 first choices 162 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 205 first choices 187 places
First preferences per place at The Burgate School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 205 first preferences for 187 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Burgate School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 143 131 131 0.92
2016/17 158 148 148 0.94
2017/18 155 156 151 1.01
2018/19 157 128 128 0.82
2019/20 124 108 108 0.87
2020/21 159 175 154 1.1
2021/22 179 148 148 0.83
2022/23 186 164 164 0.88
2023/24 159 147 147 0.92
2024/25 180 179 168 0.99
2025/26 162 136 136 0.84
2026/27 187 205 178 1.1

Places offered

187

in 2026/27

Named first choice

205

402 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

178 of 205

Offers to families outside the council

65%

122 of 187 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

937

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

910

97.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

27

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

213

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 The Burgate School and Sixth Form 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 The Burgate School and Sixth Form reported 27 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.1% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Burgate School and Sixth Form from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,051 places 988 on roll 2011/12 1,051 places 986 on roll 2012/13 1,051 places 1,001 on roll 2013/14 1,051 places 1,006 on roll 2014/15 1,021 places 1,024 on roll 2015/16 1,021 places 1,028 on roll 2016/17 1,040 places 1,027 on roll 2017/18 1,093 places 974 on roll 2018/19 1,040 places 975 on roll 2020/21 1,040 places 1,011 on roll 2021/22 1,051 places 1,065 on roll 2022/23 1,093 places 1,116 on roll 2023/24 1,051 places 1,067 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,095 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 SP6 1EZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136719).

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.