School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Backwell School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Backwell School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 263 and 276 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

276 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Backwell School

There is no published appeal success rate for Backwell 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 North Somerset 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 North Somerset, 14.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 14 of 98 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 North Somerset.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Somerset 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

Backwell School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Backwell 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 1.16 per place 348 first choices 299 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 327 first choices 300 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 316 first choices 266 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 314 first choices 269 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 284 first choices 270 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 292 first choices 268 places 2021/22 1.04 per place 281 first choices 270 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 277 first choices 267 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 295 first choices 263 places 2024/25 1 per place 266 first choices 266 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 269 first choices 263 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 276 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Backwell School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 276 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Backwell School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 299 348 298 1.16
2016/17 300 327 297 1.09
2017/18 266 316 265 1.19
2018/19 269 314 264 1.17
2019/20 270 284 269 1.05
2020/21 268 292 266 1.09
2021/22 270 281 268 1.04
2022/23 267 277 265 1.04
2023/24 263 295 260 1.12
2024/25 266 266 262 1
2025/26 263 269 263 1.02
2026/27 263 276 259 1.05

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

276

467 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.8%

259 of 276

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 263 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

1,308

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,319

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

11

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

389

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 Backwell 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 Backwell 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Backwell School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,697 places 1,683 on roll 2011/12 1,697 places 1,673 on roll 2012/13 1,697 places 1,690 on roll 2013/14 1,697 places 1,684 on roll 2014/15 1,697 places 1,694 on roll 2015/16 1,697 places 1,726 on roll 2016/17 1,697 places 1,760 on roll 2017/18 1,697 places 1,745 on roll 2018/19 1,697 places 1,754 on roll 2020/21 1,697 places 1,717 on roll 2021/22 1,697 places 1,727 on roll 2022/23 1,697 places 1,684 on roll 2023/24 1,697 places 1,624 on roll 2024/25 1,697 places 1,592 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
North Somerset

Postcode BS48 3BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136722).

Other contested secondary schools in North Somerset

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.