School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Castle School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 102 families who named The Castle School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 and 336 put it first.

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

1.42

first choices for every place available

336 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Castle School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Castle 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

The Castle School 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 The Castle 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 1.19 per place 286 first choices 240 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 278 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 306 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 267 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 295 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 333 first choices 237 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 302 first choices 236 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 269 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 323 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.32 per place 307 first choices 233 places 2025/26 1.54 per place 365 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.42 per place 336 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at The Castle School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 336 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Castle School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 286 234 1.19
2016/17 240 278 236 1.16
2017/18 239 306 235 1.28
2018/19 238 267 231 1.12
2019/20 240 295 237 1.23
2020/21 237 333 233 1.41
2021/22 236 302 233 1.28
2022/23 238 269 234 1.13
2023/24 234 323 233 1.38
2024/25 233 307 230 1.32
2025/26 237 365 234 1.54
2026/27 237 336 234 1.42

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

336

707 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.6%

234 of 336

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 237 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

1,188

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,201

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

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 The Castle 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 The Castle School 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Castle School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,219 places 1,229 on roll 2012/13 1,249 places 1,212 on roll 2013/14 1,188 places 1,195 on roll 2014/15 1,188 places 1,193 on roll 2015/16 1,188 places 1,198 on roll 2016/17 1,188 places 1,188 on roll 2017/18 1,188 places 1,184 on roll 2018/19 1,188 places 1,188 on roll 2020/21 1,188 places 1,195 on roll 2021/22 1,188 places 1,195 on roll 2022/23 1,188 places 1,199 on roll 2023/24 1,188 places 1,203 on roll 2024/25 1,188 places 1,201 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. The Castle School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Castle School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 August 2023 No fault found ADA4210 & REF4211

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 TA1 5AU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136916).

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.