School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Court Fields School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Court Fields School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 201 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Court Fields School

There is no published appeal success rate for Court Fields 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 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

Court Fields 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 Court Fields 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 0.95 per place 148 first choices 156 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 116 first choices 146 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 154 first choices 170 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 140 first choices 157 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 131 first choices 140 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 140 first choices 149 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 134 first choices 138 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 139 first choices 143 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 183 first choices 185 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 166 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 183 first choices 179 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 201 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at Court Fields School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Court Fields School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 156 148 148 0.95
2016/17 146 116 116 0.79
2017/18 170 154 154 0.91
2018/19 157 140 140 0.89
2019/20 140 131 129 0.94
2020/21 149 140 140 0.94
2021/22 138 134 134 0.97
2022/23 143 139 139 0.97
2023/24 185 183 180 0.99
2024/25 170 166 162 0.98
2025/26 179 183 176 1.02
2026/27 192 201 186 1.05

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

247 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.5%

186 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 192 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

830

92.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

70

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 Court Fields 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 Court Fields School reported 70 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.2% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Court Fields School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 860 places 698 on roll 2014/15 860 places 722 on roll 2015/16 860 places 724 on roll 2016/17 860 places 720 on roll 2017/18 860 places 740 on roll 2018/19 860 places 774 on roll 2020/21 860 places 756 on roll 2021/22 860 places 750 on roll 2022/23 860 places 755 on roll 2023/24 860 places 797 on roll 2024/25 900 places 830 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 TA21 8SW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140416).

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.