School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Priory Community School?

In 2026/27, Priory Community School offered 269 places and 264 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.98

first choices for every place available

264 first preferences for 269 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Priory Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Priory Community 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

Priory Community 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 Priory Community 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 1.35 per place 337 first choices 250 places 2016/17 1.46 per place 371 first choices 254 places 2017/18 1.35 per place 345 first choices 256 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 375 first choices 298 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 354 first choices 326 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 339 first choices 293 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 311 first choices 295 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 348 first choices 292 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 314 first choices 286 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 347 first choices 284 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 338 first choices 283 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 264 first choices 269 places
First preferences per place at Priory Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 264 first preferences for 269 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Priory Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 250 337 249 1.35
2016/17 254 371 253 1.46
2017/18 256 345 256 1.35
2018/19 298 375 298 1.26
2019/20 326 354 325 1.09
2020/21 293 339 291 1.16
2021/22 295 311 293 1.05
2022/23 292 348 290 1.19
2023/24 286 314 286 1.1
2024/25 284 347 282 1.22
2025/26 283 338 279 1.19
2026/27 269 264 264 0.98

Places offered

269

in 2026/27

Named first choice

264

387 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

264 of 264

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 268 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,479

98.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

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 Priory Community 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 Priory Community School reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.6% 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 Priory Community School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,200 places 1,203 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,214 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,236 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,258 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,268 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,253 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,261 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,318 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,426 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,479 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,499 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,503 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,479 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 BS22 6BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137300).

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.