School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Mountbatten School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named The Mountbatten School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 291 and 306 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

306 first preferences for 291 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Mountbatten School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Mountbatten 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 Mountbatten School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Mountbatten 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 280 first choices 281 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 303 first choices 299 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 303 first choices 298 places 2018/19 1.03 per place 310 first choices 300 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 299 first choices 293 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 326 first choices 294 places 2021/22 1.04 per place 306 first choices 295 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 340 first choices 288 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 336 first choices 289 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 362 first choices 291 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 313 first choices 291 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 306 first choices 291 places
First preferences per place at The Mountbatten School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 306 first preferences for 291 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Mountbatten School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 281 280 273 1
2016/17 299 303 292 1.01
2017/18 298 303 291 1.02
2018/19 300 310 291 1.03
2019/20 293 299 281 1.02
2020/21 294 326 283 1.11
2021/22 295 306 279 1.04
2022/23 288 340 282 1.18
2023/24 289 336 284 1.16
2024/25 291 362 289 1.24
2025/26 291 313 286 1.08
2026/27 291 306 281 1.05

Places offered

291

in 2026/27

Named first choice

306

588 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.8%

281 of 306

Offers to families outside the council

12%

34 of 291 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Mountbatten School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for The Mountbatten School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked After Children and previously Looked After Children (see definition below). (A letter from the Children's Services Department confirming the child’s status must be provided). Previously looked after children also includes those who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. A child is regarded as having been in state care outside of England if they were in the care of or were accommodated by a public authority, a religious organisation, or any other provider of care whose sole or main purpose is to benefit society.
2 Children or families with an exceptional medical and/or social need. Each application must include supporting evidence from an independent professional such as a doctor and/or consultant for medical needs or a social worker, health visitor, housing officer, the police or probation officer for social needs. This evidence must confirm the child or family’s medical or social need and why that need(s) makes it essential that the child attends The Mountbatten School rather than any other (see definition below*). […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Children living within the catchment areas of The Mountbatten School who at the time of application have a sibling on the roll of The Mountbatten School and who will still be on roll at the time of the sibling’s admission.
4 Children living inside the catchment areas of The Mountbatten School who, at the time of application, attend one of the linked primary schools (Halterworth Community Primary School; North Baddesley Junior School; Nursling C of E Primary School; Romsey Primary School; Rownhams St John's C of E Primary School and Wellow School).
5 Other children living within the catchment areas of The Mountbatten School.
6 Children of staff employed by The Mountbatten School where:
a) the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or
b) the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage (including roles where there has been one failed recruitment cycle since March 2026).
7 Children living outside the catchment areas of The Mountbatten School with a residential postcode beginning SO51 who at the time of application have a sibling on the roll of The Mountbatten School and who will still be on roll at the time of the sibling’s admission.
8 Children living outside the catchment areas of The Mountbatten School with a residential postcode beginning SO51.
9 Other children. Looked After Children
10 provides priority for children who are (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of th

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

The Mountbatten School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,480

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,458

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

22

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 The Mountbatten 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 Mountbatten School reported 22 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Mountbatten School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,420 places 1,408 on roll 2011/12 1,420 places 1,412 on roll 2012/13 1,420 places 1,414 on roll 2013/14 1,420 places 1,418 on roll 2014/15 1,420 places 1,426 on roll 2015/16 1,420 places 1,407 on roll 2016/17 1,420 places 1,408 on roll 2017/18 1,420 places 1,402 on roll 2018/19 1,420 places 1,408 on roll 2020/21 1,420 places 1,426 on roll 2021/22 1,420 places 1,440 on roll 2022/23 1,420 places 1,462 on roll 2023/24 1,420 places 1,453 on roll 2024/25 1,480 places 1,458 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 SO51 5SY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136640).

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.