School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bradley Stoke Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Bradley Stoke Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 150 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

first choices for every place available

150 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bradley Stoke Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bradley Stoke 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

Bradley Stoke Community School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Bradley Stoke 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 1.32 per place 235 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 221 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 215 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.55 per place 273 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 249 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.62 per place 283 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 256 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.56 per place 224 first choices 144 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 207 first choices 151 places 2024/25 1.46 per place 210 first choices 144 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 163 first choices 151 places 2026/27 1 per place 150 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Bradley Stoke Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 150 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bradley Stoke 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
2015/16 178 235 173 1.32
2016/17 178 221 177 1.24
2017/18 177 215 169 1.21
2018/19 176 273 168 1.55
2019/20 175 249 168 1.42
2020/21 175 283 168 1.62
2021/22 177 256 173 1.45
2022/23 144 224 144 1.56
2023/24 151 207 148 1.37
2024/25 144 210 133 1.46
2025/26 151 163 146 1.08
2026/27 150 150 139 1

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

150

423 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.7%

139 of 150

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 150 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

1,110

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,105

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

225

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 Bradley Stoke 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 Bradley Stoke Community School reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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 Bradley Stoke Community School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,080 places 1,118 on roll 2012/13 1,080 places 1,106 on roll 2013/14 1,111 places 1,104 on roll 2014/15 1,114 places 1,114 on roll 2015/16 1,324 places 1,119 on roll 2016/17 1,324 places 1,138 on roll 2017/18 1,324 places 1,186 on roll 2018/19 1,324 places 1,203 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,309 on roll 2021/22 1,335 places 1,339 on roll 2022/23 1,335 places 1,332 on roll 2023/24 1,335 places 1,367 on roll 2024/25 1,335 places 1,384 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
South Gloucestershire

Postcode BS32 9BS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137753).

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.