School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hampton College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Hampton College as their first choice did not get a place: 126 put it first and 124 of them were offered one.

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

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

126 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hampton College

There is no published appeal success rate for Hampton 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 Peterborough 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 Peterborough, 12.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 29 of 230 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 Peterborough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Peterborough 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

Hampton College turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Hampton 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 0.91 per place 188 first choices 206 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 216 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 136 first choices 172 places 2018/19 0.8 per place 113 first choices 141 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 141 first choices 148 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 157 first choices 149 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 128 first choices 149 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 120 first choices 142 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 124 first choices 149 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 130 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 120 first choices 148 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 126 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at Hampton College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 126 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hampton College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 206 188 183 0.91
2016/17 208 216 194 1.04
2017/18 172 136 136 0.79
2018/19 141 113 113 0.8
2019/20 148 141 136 0.95
2020/21 149 157 136 1.05
2021/22 149 128 123 0.86
2022/23 142 120 120 0.85
2023/24 149 124 110 0.83
2024/25 150 130 112 0.87
2025/26 148 120 109 0.81
2026/27 148 126 124 0.85

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

126

393 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.4%

124 of 126

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 148 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

1,602

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,407

87.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

195

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

229

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 Hampton 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 Hampton College reported 195 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.8% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hampton College from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,719 places 1,143 on roll 2015/16 1,719 places 1,277 on roll 2016/17 1,719 places 1,386 on roll 2017/18 1,719 places 1,452 on roll 2018/19 1,719 places 1,537 on roll 2020/21 1,719 places 1,614 on roll 2021/22 1,719 places 1,659 on roll 2022/23 1,719 places 1,685 on roll 2023/24 1,719 places 1,672 on roll 2024/25 1,831 places 1,617 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
Peterborough

Postcode PE7 8BF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141300).

Other contested secondary schools in Peterborough

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.