School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Millbay Academy?

In 2026/27, Millbay Academy offered 103 places and 95 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Plymouth actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

0.92

first choices for every place available

95 first preferences for 103 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Millbay Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Millbay Academy, 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

Millbay Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 6 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Millbay Academy, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 0.55 per place 29 first choices 53 places 2022/23 0.42 per place 20 first choices 48 places 2023/24 0.6 per place 34 first choices 57 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 61 first choices 69 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 107 first choices 85 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 95 first choices 103 places
First preferences per place at Millbay Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 103 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Millbay Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 53 29 29 0.55
2022/23 48 20 20 0.42
2023/24 57 34 33 0.6
2024/25 69 61 61 0.88
2025/26 85 107 82 1.26
2026/27 103 95 95 0.92

Places offered

103

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

188 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

95 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

5%

5 of 100 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

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

546

53.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

474

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 Millbay Academy 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 Millbay Academy reported 474 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 53.5% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Millbay Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 1,020 places 639 on roll 2021/22 1,020 places 560 on roll 2022/23 1,020 places 564 on roll 2023/24 1,020 places 536 on roll 2024/25 1,020 places 546 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Plymouth

Postcode PL1 3EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147905).

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.