School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Costello School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named The Costello School as their first choice did not get a place: 187 put it first and 160 of them were offered one.

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

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

187 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Costello School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Costello 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

The Costello School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at The Costello 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 224 first choices 223 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 239 first choices 223 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 201 first choices 223 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 206 first choices 224 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 204 first choices 223 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 232 first choices 223 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 205 first choices 266 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 250 first choices 260 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 265 first choices 254 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 210 first choices 256 places 2025/26 0.65 per place 140 first choices 217 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 187 first choices 211 places
First preferences per place at The Costello School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 187 first preferences for 211 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Costello School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 223 224 197 1
2016/17 223 239 197 1.07
2017/18 223 201 176 0.9
2018/19 224 206 183 0.92
2019/20 223 204 198 0.91
2020/21 223 232 197 1.04
2021/22 266 205 191 0.77
2022/23 260 250 231 0.96
2023/24 254 265 210 1.04
2024/25 256 210 201 0.82
2025/26 217 140 140 0.65
2026/27 211 187 160 0.89

Places offered

211

in 2026/27

Named first choice

187

497 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

160 of 187

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 211 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

1,206

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,212

100.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

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 The Costello 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 The Costello 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Costello School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,120 places 1,067 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 1,093 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 1,088 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 1,081 on roll 2016/17 1,120 places 1,112 on roll 2017/18 1,120 places 1,112 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 1,113 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,135 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,170 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,194 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,212 on roll 2024/25 1,206 places 1,212 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 RG21 4AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138287).

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.