School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Abbeywood Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Abbeywood Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 223 and 244 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

244 first preferences for 223 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Abbeywood Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Abbeywood Community 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 South Gloucestershire 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 South Gloucestershire, 25.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 76 of 302 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 South Gloucestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not South Gloucestershire 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

Abbeywood Community School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Abbeywood Community 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 0.73 per place 124 first choices 169 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 166 first choices 168 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 149 first choices 174 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 174 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 194 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 203 first choices 174 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 194 first choices 203 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 222 first choices 231 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 243 first choices 227 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 268 first choices 235 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 223 first choices 225 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 244 first choices 223 places
First preferences per place at Abbeywood Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 244 first preferences for 223 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Abbeywood Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 169 124 124 0.73
2016/17 168 166 154 0.99
2017/18 174 149 139 0.86
2018/19 178 174 141 0.98
2019/20 171 194 143 1.13
2020/21 174 203 147 1.17
2021/22 203 194 173 0.96
2022/23 231 222 200 0.96
2023/24 227 243 207 1.07
2024/25 235 268 212 1.14
2025/26 225 223 207 0.99
2026/27 223 244 219 1.09

Places offered

223

in 2026/27

Named first choice

244

493 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.8%

219 of 244

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 223 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

1,310

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,115

85.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

195

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

344

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 Abbeywood Community 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 Abbeywood Community School reported 195 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.1% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Abbeywood Community School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,217 places 797 on roll 2013/14 1,217 places 800 on roll 2014/15 1,217 places 816 on roll 2015/16 1,217 places 867 on roll 2016/17 1,217 places 913 on roll 2017/18 1,217 places 931 on roll 2018/19 1,217 places 966 on roll 2020/21 1,217 places 1,022 on roll 2021/22 1,214 places 1,074 on roll 2022/23 1,654 places 1,169 on roll 2023/24 1,654 places 1,228 on roll 2024/25 1,654 places 1,263 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
South Gloucestershire

Postcode BS34 8SF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139067).

Other contested secondary schools in South Gloucestershire

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.