School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at UTC Plymouth?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named UTC Plymouth as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 115 and 115 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Plymouth actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1

first choices for every place available

115 first preferences for 115 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at UTC Plymouth

There is no published appeal success rate for UTC Plymouth, 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

UTC Plymouth turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 7 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at UTC Plymouth, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.62 per place 53 first choices 85 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 114 first choices 126 places 2022/23 1.67 per place 194 first choices 116 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 137 first choices 116 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 172 first choices 116 places 2025/26 1.29 per place 145 first choices 112 places 2026/27 1 per place 115 first choices 115 places
First preferences per place at UTC Plymouth. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 115 first preferences for 115 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at UTC Plymouth, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 85 53 53 0.62
2021/22 126 114 113 0.9
2022/23 116 194 110 1.67
2023/24 116 137 113 1.18
2024/25 116 172 110 1.48
2025/26 112 145 109 1.29
2026/27 115 115 112 1

Places offered

115

in 2026/27

Named first choice

115

229 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.4%

112 of 115

Offers to families outside the council

3%

4 of 115 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

490

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

536

109.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

160

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 UTC Plymouth 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 UTC Plymouth 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at UTC Plymouth from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 650 places 79 on roll 2020/21 650 places 330 on roll 2021/22 650 places 493 on roll 2022/23 650 places 527 on roll 2023/24 650 places 544 on roll 2024/25 650 places 582 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
University technical college
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Plymouth

Postcode PL1 4RL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146560).

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.