School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trafalgar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Trafalgar School as their first choice did not get a place: 192 put it first and 189 of them were offered one.

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

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

192 first preferences for 224 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trafalgar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Trafalgar 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

Trafalgar School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Trafalgar 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 0.64 per place 59 first choices 92 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 129 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 132 first choices 137 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 156 first choices 169 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 207 first choices 215 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 184 first choices 195 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 190 first choices 211 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 201 first choices 215 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 196 first choices 225 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 240 first choices 215 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 269 first choices 199 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 192 first choices 224 places
First preferences per place at Trafalgar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 224 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trafalgar 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 92 59 59 0.64
2016/17 178 129 129 0.72
2017/18 137 132 132 0.96
2018/19 169 156 156 0.92
2019/20 215 207 203 0.96
2020/21 195 184 184 0.94
2021/22 211 190 190 0.9
2022/23 215 201 190 0.93
2023/24 225 196 196 0.87
2024/25 215 240 190 1.12
2025/26 199 269 170 1.35
2026/27 224 192 189 0.86

Places offered

224

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

650 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.4%

189 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 224 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

1,110

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,028

92.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

82

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 Trafalgar 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 Trafalgar School reported 82 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.6% 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 Trafalgar School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 985 places 446 on roll 2015/16 985 places 491 on roll 2016/17 985 places 558 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 580 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 667 on roll 2020/21 1,060 places 852 on roll 2021/22 1,060 places 884 on roll 2022/23 1,060 places 966 on roll 2023/24 1,065 places 1,015 on roll 2024/25 1,110 places 1,028 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Portsmouth

Postcode PO2 9RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141875).

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.