School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Downend School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named Downend School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 276 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.

1.21

first choices for every place available

276 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Downend School

There is no published appeal success rate for Downend 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

Downend 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 Downend 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 0.92 per place 193 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 245 first choices 235 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 303 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 268 first choices 232 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 311 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.38 per place 324 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 270 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 288 first choices 265 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 297 first choices 262 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 351 first choices 233 places 2025/26 1.46 per place 336 first choices 230 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 276 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Downend School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 276 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Downend School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 193 181 0.92
2016/17 235 245 208 1.04
2017/18 237 303 232 1.28
2018/19 232 268 220 1.16
2019/20 236 311 229 1.32
2020/21 234 324 228 1.38
2021/22 235 270 226 1.15
2022/23 265 288 256 1.09
2023/24 262 297 251 1.13
2024/25 233 351 224 1.51
2025/26 230 336 229 1.46
2026/27 229 276 225 1.21

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

276

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.5%

225 of 276

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 229 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

1,215

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,246

102.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

31

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

210

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 Downend 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 Downend 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Downend School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,425 places 1,242 on roll 2013/14 1,425 places 1,122 on roll 2014/15 1,425 places 1,017 on roll 2015/16 1,425 places 1,010 on roll 2016/17 1,425 places 1,047 on roll 2017/18 1,425 places 1,111 on roll 2018/19 1,425 places 1,227 on roll 2020/21 1,425 places 1,320 on roll 2021/22 1,425 places 1,333 on roll 2022/23 1,425 places 1,358 on roll 2023/24 1,425 places 1,409 on roll 2024/25 1,425 places 1,424 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. Downend School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Downend School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
29 September 2017 Arrangements did not comply REF3342

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
South Gloucestershire

Postcode BS16 6XA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139345).

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.