School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Clevedon School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Clevedon School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 271 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.

1.20

first choices for every place available

271 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Clevedon School

There is no published appeal success rate for Clevedon 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

Clevedon School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Clevedon 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 0.99 per place 212 first choices 214 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 178 first choices 183 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 214 first choices 220 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 213 first choices 221 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 221 first choices 228 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 232 first choices 239 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 223 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 248 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 239 first choices 234 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 226 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1 per place 212 first choices 213 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 271 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Clevedon School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 271 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Clevedon School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 214 212 212 0.99
2016/17 183 178 178 0.97
2017/18 220 214 214 0.97
2018/19 221 213 213 0.96
2019/20 228 221 221 0.97
2020/21 239 232 232 0.97
2021/22 233 223 223 0.96
2022/23 239 248 238 1.04
2023/24 234 239 231 1.02
2024/25 235 226 226 0.96
2025/26 213 212 212 1
2026/27 225 271 225 1.2

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

271

424 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83%

225 of 271

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 225 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

1,252

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,167

93.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

85

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Clevedon 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 Clevedon School reported 85 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.2% 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 Clevedon School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,409 places 1,227 on roll 2012/13 1,409 places 1,214 on roll 2013/14 1,409 places 1,184 on roll 2014/15 1,409 places 1,185 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,187 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,171 on roll 2017/18 1,409 places 1,204 on roll 2018/19 1,409 places 1,231 on roll 2020/21 1,245 places 1,307 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,348 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,366 on roll 2023/24 1,409 places 1,375 on roll 2024/25 1,452 places 1,373 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 BS21 6AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137884).

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.