School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sexey's School?

In 2026/27, Sexey's School offered 98 places and 97 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.

0.99

first choices for every place available

97 first preferences for 98 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sexey's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sexey's 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

Sexey's School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Sexey's 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 1.12 per place 73 first choices 65 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 91 first choices 68 places 2017/18 1.43 per place 97 first choices 68 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 100 first choices 101 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 94 first choices 90 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 87 first choices 92 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 70 first choices 73 places 2022/23 1.25 per place 106 first choices 85 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 91 first choices 74 places 2024/25 1.73 per place 111 first choices 64 places 2025/26 1.25 per place 99 first choices 79 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 97 first choices 98 places
First preferences per place at Sexey's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 97 first preferences for 98 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sexey's 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 65 73 63 1.12
2016/17 68 91 67 1.34
2017/18 68 97 68 1.43
2018/19 101 100 97 0.99
2019/20 90 94 86 1.04
2020/21 92 87 87 0.95
2021/22 73 70 70 0.96
2022/23 85 106 85 1.25
2023/24 74 91 73 1.23
2024/25 64 111 64 1.73
2025/26 79 99 77 1.25
2026/27 98 97 97 0.99

Places offered

98

in 2026/27

Named first choice

97

152 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

97 of 97

Offers to families outside the council

6%

6 of 98 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

540

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

518

95.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

22

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

125

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 Sexey's 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 Sexey's School reported 22 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.9% 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 Sexey's School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 582 places 548 on roll 2012/13 602 places 516 on roll 2013/14 602 places 479 on roll 2014/15 602 places 501 on roll 2015/16 602 places 531 on roll 2016/17 602 places 545 on roll 2017/18 602 places 587 on roll 2018/19 665 places 597 on roll 2020/21 665 places 616 on roll 2021/22 665 places 610 on roll 2022/23 665 places 655 on roll 2023/24 665 places 670 on roll 2024/25 665 places 662 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Somerset

Postcode BA10 0DF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137313).

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.