School admission appeals in Somerset
Somerset heard 148 school admission appeals in 2026, and 12 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Somerset as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Somerset success rate has run 7.2 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Somerset were upheld
77 of 633 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
218
by parents in Somerset
Appeals heard by a panel
148
68% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
12
8.1% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
53% of the primary appeals heard in Somerset were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Somerset, 4% of infant class size appeals were upheld (6 of 151 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Somerset
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Somerset rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Somerset
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 348 | 50 | 14.4% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 285 | 27 | 9.5% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 151 | 6 | 4% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Somerset, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Somerset | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 184 | 48 | 26.1% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 206 | 42 | 20.4% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 231 | 44 | 19% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 215 | 65 | 30.2% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 176 | 37 | 21% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 194 | 34 | 17.5% | 19% |
| 2022 | 153 | 44 | 28.8% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 160 | 29 | 18.1% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 232 | 34 | 14.7% | 20% |
| 2025 | 253 | 31 | 12.3% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 148 | 12 | 8.1% | 18.5% |
How Somerset compares
Success rate ranking
108 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
62 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 633 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Before Somerset existed
Became a unitary authority; ONS code changed but the boundary and the time series did not.
Schools in Somerset
Somerset has 253 state-funded mainstream schools — 219 primary, 33 secondary and 1 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Taunton, Bridgwater, Yeovil and Frome.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Somerset schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 9 secondary and 66 primary schools in Somerset →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brymore Academy | 34 | 61 | 1.79 |
| The Castle School | 237 | 336 | 1.42 |
| Bishop Fox's School | 224 | 287 | 1.28 |
| Chilton Trinity School | 198 | 227 | 1.15 |
| Westfield Academy | 208 | 220 | 1.06 |
| Court Fields School | 192 | 201 | 1.05 |
| Sexey's School | 98 | 97 | 0.99 |
| The King Alfred School an Academy | 225 | 223 | 0.99 |
| Preston School Academy | 205 | 185 | 0.90 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingfisher Primary School | 30 | 43 | 1.43 |
| Blackbrook Primary School | 30 | 41 | 1.37 |
| Trull Church of England VA Primary School | 30 | 41 | 1.37 |
| Ashcott Primary School | 17 | 23 | 1.35 |
| West Pennard Church of England Primary School | 30 | 40 | 1.33 |
| St John and St Francis Church School | 60 | 79 | 1.32 |
| Hayesdown First School | 59 | 77 | 1.31 |
| Staplegrove Church School | 30 | 39 | 1.30 |
| Enmore Church of England Primary School | 22 | 28 | 1.27 |
| Somerset Bridge Primary School | 60 | 75 | 1.25 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Somerset
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. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 19 objections about schools in Somerset, and found the arrangements did not comply in 16.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Isambard Kingdom Brunel Primary School | 6 December 2023 | Complied |
| The Castle School | 24 August 2023 | Complied |
| Hinton St George Church of England Primary School | 9 September 2022 | Did not comply |
| Ashlands Church of England First School | 26 July 2022 | Did not comply |
| St James Church School | 6 August 2020 | Did not comply |
| Norton St Philip Church of England First School | 14 November 2019 | Did not comply |
| Neroche Primary School | 13 August 2015 | Complied |
| Thurlbear Church of England Primary School | 18 November 2014 | Did not comply |
| Trull Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School | 17 September 2014 | Did not comply |
| Horsington CE Primary School | 27 August 2014 | Did not comply |
Somerset does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.