School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Petersfield School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 49 families who named The Petersfield School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 274 and 323 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

323 first preferences for 274 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Petersfield School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Petersfield 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 Petersfield 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 The Petersfield 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 1.15 per place 297 first choices 258 places 2016/17 1.2 per place 326 first choices 271 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 291 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 331 first choices 298 places 2019/20 1.31 per place 362 first choices 277 places 2020/21 1.32 per place 364 first choices 276 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 365 first choices 278 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 327 first choices 276 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 346 first choices 273 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 350 first choices 271 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 318 first choices 266 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 323 first choices 274 places
First preferences per place at The Petersfield School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 323 first preferences for 274 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Petersfield School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 258 297 230 1.15
2016/17 271 326 246 1.2
2017/18 268 291 257 1.09
2018/19 298 331 293 1.11
2019/20 277 362 272 1.31
2020/21 276 364 275 1.32
2021/22 278 365 278 1.31
2022/23 276 327 276 1.18
2023/24 273 346 273 1.27
2024/25 271 350 271 1.29
2025/26 266 318 266 1.2
2026/27 274 323 274 1.18

Places offered

274

in 2026/27

Named first choice

323

523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.8%

274 of 323

Offers to families outside the council

5%

14 of 274 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

1,300

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,375

105.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

75

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 Petersfield 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 Petersfield 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Petersfield 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 1,300 places 1,238 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,214 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,244 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,250 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,308 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,323 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 1,356 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,364 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,398 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,388 on roll 2022/23 1,390 places 1,397 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,387 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,375 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 GU32 3LU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136903).

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.