School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Winterbourne Academy?

In 2026/27, Winterbourne Academy offered 262 places and 227 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in South Gloucestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

0.87

first choices for every place available

227 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Winterbourne Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Winterbourne 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 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

Winterbourne Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 9 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Winterbourne Academy, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.81 per place 240 first choices 298 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 315 first choices 297 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 258 first choices 299 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 305 first choices 300 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 324 first choices 356 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 336 first choices 295 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 296 first choices 287 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 269 first choices 293 places 2026/27 0.87 per place 227 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at Winterbourne Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Winterbourne Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 298 240 240 0.81
2019/20 297 315 265 1.06
2020/21 299 258 237 0.86
2021/22 300 305 276 1.02
2022/23 356 324 321 0.91
2023/24 295 336 280 1.14
2024/25 287 296 241 1.03
2025/26 293 269 258 0.92
2026/27 262 227 227 0.87

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

584 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

227 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 257 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

1,614

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,546

95.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

68

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

380

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 Winterbourne 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 Winterbourne Academy reported 68 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.8% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Winterbourne Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,815 places 1,725 on roll 2018/19 1,815 places 1,669 on roll 2020/21 1,880 places 1,723 on roll 2021/22 1,880 places 1,758 on roll 2022/23 1,880 places 1,856 on roll 2023/24 1,880 places 1,822 on roll 2024/25 1,994 places 1,785 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 BS36 1JL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145502).

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.