School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Eggbuckland Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Eggbuckland Community College as their first choice did not get a place: 171 put it first and 169 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Plymouth 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

171 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Eggbuckland Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Eggbuckland Community 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 Plymouth 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 Plymouth, 17.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 35 of 201 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 Plymouth.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Plymouth 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

Eggbuckland Community College turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Eggbuckland Community 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 131 first choices 144 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 148 first choices 169 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 123 first choices 133 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 155 first choices 177 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 206 first choices 204 places 2020/21 1.32 per place 234 first choices 177 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 200 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 223 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 225 first choices 175 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 210 first choices 201 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 185 first choices 175 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 171 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Eggbuckland Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Eggbuckland Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 144 131 131 0.91
2016/17 169 148 148 0.88
2017/18 133 123 123 0.92
2018/19 177 155 149 0.88
2019/20 204 206 183 1.01
2020/21 177 234 166 1.32
2021/22 177 200 164 1.13
2022/23 206 223 198 1.08
2023/24 175 225 168 1.29
2024/25 201 210 189 1.04
2025/26 175 185 164 1.06
2026/27 179 171 169 0.96

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

359 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.8%

169 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 179 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

916

101.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

16

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Eggbuckland Community 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 Eggbuckland Community College 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Eggbuckland Community College from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,300 places 1,181 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,060 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 1,014 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 955 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 915 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 948 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,014 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,008 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,048 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,038 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,019 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
Plymouth

Postcode PL6 5YB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140104).

Other contested secondary schools in Plymouth

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.