School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Westfield Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Westfield Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 220 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

220 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Westfield Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Westfield 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

Westfield Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Westfield 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 0.94 per place 130 first choices 138 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 167 first choices 172 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 144 first choices 169 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 190 first choices 196 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 196 first choices 201 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 253 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 293 first choices 202 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 197 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 219 first choices 205 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 225 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1 per place 200 first choices 201 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 220 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at Westfield Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Westfield Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 138 130 130 0.94
2016/17 172 167 167 0.97
2017/18 169 144 144 0.85
2018/19 196 190 190 0.97
2019/20 201 196 193 0.98
2020/21 234 253 228 1.08
2021/22 202 293 200 1.45
2022/23 207 197 190 0.95
2023/24 205 219 193 1.07
2024/25 205 225 198 1.1
2025/26 201 200 188 1
2026/27 208 220 203 1.06

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

416 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.3%

203 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 208 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

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,021

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

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 Westfield 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 Westfield 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Westfield 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 1,020 places 826 on roll 2012/13 1,020 places 792 on roll 2013/14 1,020 places 721 on roll 2014/15 1,020 places 739 on roll 2015/16 1,020 places 710 on roll 2016/17 1,020 places 710 on roll 2017/18 1,020 places 738 on roll 2018/19 1,020 places 831 on roll 2020/21 1,020 places 991 on roll 2021/22 1,020 places 1,031 on roll 2022/23 1,020 places 1,046 on roll 2023/24 1,020 places 1,029 on roll 2024/25 1,020 places 1,021 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 3DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137203).

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.