School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Wavell School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 54 families who named The Wavell School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 242 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

242 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Wavell School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Wavell 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 Wavell School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 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 Wavell 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 1.12 per place 222 first choices 198 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 243 first choices 213 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 242 first choices 194 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 260 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 237 first choices 200 places 2020/21 1.32 per place 258 first choices 195 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 238 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 197 first choices 199 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 227 first choices 195 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 249 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 228 first choices 195 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 242 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at The Wavell School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 242 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Wavell School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 198 222 190 1.12
2016/17 213 243 203 1.14
2017/18 194 242 184 1.25
2018/19 200 260 196 1.3
2019/20 200 237 188 1.19
2020/21 195 258 187 1.32
2021/22 199 238 186 1.2
2022/23 199 197 176 0.99
2023/24 195 227 185 1.16
2024/25 204 249 188 1.22
2025/26 195 228 179 1.17
2026/27 204 242 188 1.19

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

242

525 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

188 of 242

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 204 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,029

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

29

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 Wavell 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 Wavell 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 Wavell 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 2009/10 870 places 854 on roll 2010/11 870 places 876 on roll 2011/12 895 places 881 on roll 2012/13 945 places 883 on roll 2013/14 965 places 903 on roll 2014/15 965 places 925 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 962 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 969 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 977 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 998 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,018 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,013 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,010 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,016 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,029 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Wavell School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Wavell School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
11 April 2016 No fault found ADA3059

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 GU14 6BH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116448).

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.