School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Carisbrooke College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named Carisbrooke College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 110 and 143 put it first.

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

1.30

first choices for every place available

143 first preferences for 110 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Carisbrooke College

There is no published appeal success rate for Carisbrooke College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Isle of Wight 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 Isle of Wight, 28.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 39 of 139 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 Isle of Wight.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Isle of Wight 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

Carisbrooke College turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Carisbrooke College, 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 0.69 per place 79 first choices 114 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 76 first choices 77 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 108 first choices 117 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 99 first choices 107 places 2019/20 1.29 per place 151 first choices 117 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 129 first choices 113 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 154 first choices 117 places 2022/23 1.76 per place 190 first choices 108 places 2023/24 1.54 per place 172 first choices 112 places 2024/25 1.46 per place 156 first choices 107 places 2025/26 1.52 per place 172 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.3 per place 143 first choices 110 places
First preferences per place at Carisbrooke College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 143 first preferences for 110 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Carisbrooke College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 114 79 79 0.69
2016/17 77 76 76 0.99
2017/18 117 108 108 0.92
2018/19 107 99 99 0.93
2019/20 117 151 116 1.29
2020/21 113 129 106 1.14
2021/22 117 154 102 1.32
2022/23 108 190 107 1.76
2023/24 112 172 107 1.54
2024/25 107 156 101 1.46
2025/26 113 172 111 1.52
2026/27 110 143 92 1.3

Places offered

110

in 2026/27

Named first choice

143

409 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.3%

92 of 143

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 110 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 136012.

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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

596

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

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 Carisbrooke College 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 Carisbrooke College reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Carisbrooke College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,813 places 1,474 on roll 2012/13 1,813 places 1,293 on roll 2013/14 1,859 places 1,145 on roll 2014/15 1,859 places 1,052 on roll 2015/16 1,859 places 914 on roll 2016/17 1,859 places 717 on roll 2017/18 1,859 places 553 on roll 2018/19 600 places 545 on roll 2020/21 600 places 579 on roll 2021/22 600 places 599 on roll 2022/23 600 places 597 on roll 2023/24 600 places 608 on roll 2024/25 600 places 596 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
Isle of Wight

Postcode PO30 5QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150100).

Other contested secondary schools in Isle of Wight

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.