School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Priory School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Priory School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 264 and 320 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

320 first preferences for 264 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Priory School

There is no published appeal success rate for Priory 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 Portsmouth 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 Portsmouth, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 38 of 295 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 Portsmouth.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Portsmouth 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 School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 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 0.94 per place 235 first choices 250 places 2016/17 0.81 per place 203 first choices 250 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 229 first choices 247 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 247 first choices 249 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 229 first choices 246 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 233 first choices 245 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 217 first choices 247 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 276 first choices 246 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 276 first choices 259 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 323 first choices 256 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 326 first choices 262 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 320 first choices 264 places
First preferences per place at Priory School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 320 first preferences for 264 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Priory School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 250 235 223 0.94
2016/17 250 203 203 0.81
2017/18 247 229 229 0.93
2018/19 249 247 226 0.99
2019/20 246 229 210 0.93
2020/21 245 233 215 0.95
2021/22 247 217 210 0.88
2022/23 246 276 228 1.12
2023/24 259 276 235 1.07
2024/25 256 323 231 1.26
2025/26 262 326 229 1.24
2026/27 264 320 246 1.21

Places offered

264

in 2026/27

Named first choice

320

751 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.9%

246 of 320

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 264 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

1,270

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,256

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

14

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 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 School reported 14 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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 Priory School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,250 places 1,192 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,187 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,174 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,187 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,214 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,220 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,236 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,238 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,244 on roll 2024/25 1,270 places 1,256 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Priory School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Priory School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 September 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3437

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Portsmouth

Postcode PO4 0DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141175).

Other contested secondary schools in Portsmouth

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.