School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Preston School Academy?

In 2026/27, Preston School Academy offered 205 places and 185 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.90

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Preston School Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Preston School 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

Preston School Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Preston School Academy, 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 1.02 per place 205 first choices 201 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 172 first choices 181 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 232 first choices 203 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 168 first choices 175 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 167 first choices 174 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 94 first choices 103 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 110 first choices 165 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 207 first choices 204 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 185 first choices 203 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 219 first choices 204 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 146 first choices 165 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 185 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Preston School Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Preston School Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 201 205 199 1.02
2016/17 181 172 172 0.95
2017/18 203 232 198 1.14
2018/19 175 168 168 0.96
2019/20 174 167 166 0.96
2020/21 103 94 94 0.91
2021/22 165 110 110 0.67
2022/23 204 207 196 1.01
2023/24 203 185 180 0.91
2024/25 204 219 195 1.07
2025/26 165 146 146 0.88
2026/27 205 185 185 0.9

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

382 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

185 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 202 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

984

93.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

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 Preston School 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 Preston School Academy reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Preston School Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 975 places 937 on roll 2012/13 975 places 981 on roll 2013/14 1,015 places 976 on roll 2014/15 1,015 places 997 on roll 2015/16 1,015 places 985 on roll 2016/17 1,015 places 987 on roll 2017/18 1,015 places 985 on roll 2018/19 1,015 places 957 on roll 2020/21 1,015 places 913 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 916 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 959 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 982 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 984 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Somerset

Postcode BA21 3JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136894).

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.