School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Westgate School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 63 families who named The Westgate School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 187 and 250 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

250 first preferences for 187 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Westgate School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Westgate 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 Westgate 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 Westgate 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 1.07 per place 256 first choices 240 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 292 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 272 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 262 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 303 first choices 255 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 311 first choices 250 places 2021/22 1.36 per place 254 first choices 187 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 219 first choices 182 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 226 first choices 179 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 247 first choices 190 places 2025/26 1.43 per place 291 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 250 first choices 187 places
First preferences per place at The Westgate School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 250 first preferences for 187 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Westgate School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 256 224 1.07
2016/17 240 292 236 1.22
2017/18 239 272 218 1.14
2018/19 238 262 210 1.1
2019/20 255 303 247 1.19
2020/21 250 311 249 1.24
2021/22 187 254 185 1.36
2022/23 182 219 181 1.2
2023/24 179 226 176 1.26
2024/25 190 247 190 1.3
2025/26 203 291 202 1.43
2026/27 187 250 187 1.34

Places offered

187

in 2026/27

Named first choice

250

567 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.8%

187 of 250

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 187 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

1,560

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,625

104.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

65

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 Westgate 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 Westgate 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 Westgate School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,050 places 1,110 on roll 2010/11 1,081 places 1,074 on roll 2011/12 1,081 places 1,080 on roll 2012/13 1,081 places 1,108 on roll 2013/14 1,128 places 1,111 on roll 2014/15 1,539 places 1,206 on roll 2015/16 1,539 places 1,275 on roll 2016/17 1,539 places 1,372 on roll 2017/18 1,539 places 1,430 on roll 2018/19 1,539 places 1,500 on roll 2020/21 1,620 places 1,624 on roll 2021/22 1,620 places 1,624 on roll 2022/23 1,620 places 1,633 on roll 2023/24 1,560 places 1,627 on roll 2024/25 1,560 places 1,625 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 SO22 5AZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116407).

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.