School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Toynbee School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named The Toynbee School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 200 and 203 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

203 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Toynbee School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Toynbee 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 Toynbee School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 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 Toynbee 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 0.8 per place 109 first choices 136 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 160 first choices 193 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 158 first choices 186 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 184 first choices 214 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 198 first choices 218 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 224 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 202 first choices 204 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 196 first choices 204 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 186 first choices 202 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 214 first choices 224 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 210 first choices 226 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 203 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at The Toynbee School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 203 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Toynbee School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 136 109 109 0.8
2016/17 193 160 159 0.83
2017/18 186 158 158 0.85
2018/19 214 184 184 0.86
2019/20 218 198 198 0.91
2020/21 207 224 189 1.08
2021/22 204 202 178 0.99
2022/23 204 196 179 0.96
2023/24 202 186 179 0.92
2024/25 224 214 199 0.96
2025/26 226 210 210 0.93
2026/27 200 203 192 1.01

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

203

507 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.6%

192 of 203

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 200 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,094

104.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

44

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 Toynbee 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 Toynbee 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Toynbee School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,050 places 1,047 on roll 2010/11 1,050 places 999 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 961 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 904 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 845 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 769 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 757 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 773 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 820 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 871 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,015 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,031 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,053 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,069 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,094 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hampshire

Postcode SO53 2PL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116411).

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.