School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brymore Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Brymore Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 34 and 61 put it first.

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

1.79

first choices for every place available

61 first preferences for 34 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brymore Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Brymore 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 Somerset 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 Somerset, 14.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 50 of 348 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 Somerset.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Somerset 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

Brymore Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Brymore Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.36 per place 30 first choices 22 places 2016/17 1.59 per place 51 first choices 32 places 2017/18 1.74 per place 61 first choices 35 places 2018/19 1.76 per place 74 first choices 42 places 2019/20 1.56 per place 64 first choices 41 places 2020/21 1.81 per place 65 first choices 36 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 61 first choices 39 places 2022/23 1.94 per place 62 first choices 32 places 2023/24 2.27 per place 75 first choices 33 places 2024/25 2.26 per place 70 first choices 31 places 2025/26 1.91 per place 63 first choices 33 places 2026/27 1.79 per place 61 first choices 34 places
First preferences per place at Brymore Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 61 first preferences for 34 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brymore Academy, 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 22 30 22 1.36
2016/17 32 51 30 1.59
2017/18 35 61 35 1.74
2018/19 42 74 42 1.76
2019/20 41 64 41 1.56
2020/21 36 65 36 1.81
2021/22 39 61 39 1.56
2022/23 32 62 32 1.94
2023/24 33 75 32 2.27
2024/25 31 70 31 2.26
2025/26 33 63 33 1.91
2026/27 34 61 34 1.79

Places offered

34

in 2026/27

Named first choice

61

88 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

55.7%

34 of 61

Offers to families outside the council

3%

1 of 34 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

310

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

344

111% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

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 Brymore 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 Brymore Academy 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Brymore Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 200 400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 324 places 146 on roll 2014/15 265 places 192 on roll 2015/16 310 places 250 on roll 2016/17 310 places 282 on roll 2017/18 310 places 300 on roll 2018/19 310 places 323 on roll 2020/21 310 places 334 on roll 2021/22 310 places 333 on roll 2022/23 310 places 340 on roll 2023/24 310 places 343 on roll 2024/25 310 places 344 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
Somerset

Postcode TA5 2NB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139655).

Other contested secondary schools in Somerset

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.