School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bitterne Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Bitterne Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 332 and 336 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

336 first preferences for 332 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bitterne Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bitterne Park 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 Southampton 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 Southampton, 27.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 69 of 249 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 Southampton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southampton 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

Bitterne Park 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 Bitterne Park 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 388 first choices 294 places 2016/17 1.29 per place 344 first choices 267 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 383 first choices 324 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 358 first choices 318 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 415 first choices 331 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 422 first choices 316 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 409 first choices 314 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 452 first choices 319 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 353 first choices 311 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 330 first choices 314 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 319 first choices 324 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 336 first choices 332 places
First preferences per place at Bitterne Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 336 first preferences for 332 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bitterne Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 294 388 289 1.32
2016/17 267 344 265 1.29
2017/18 324 383 320 1.18
2018/19 318 358 307 1.13
2019/20 331 415 316 1.25
2020/21 316 422 305 1.34
2021/22 314 409 305 1.3
2022/23 319 452 313 1.42
2023/24 311 353 303 1.14
2024/25 314 330 297 1.05
2025/26 324 319 296 0.98
2026/27 332 336 297 1.01

Places offered

332

in 2026/27

Named first choice

336

702 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.4%

297 of 336

Offers to families outside the council

6%

21 of 332 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

1,800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,848

102.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

48

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

180

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 Bitterne Park 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 Bitterne Park 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bitterne Park School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,500 places 1,431 on roll 2010/11 1,500 places 1,453 on roll 2011/12 1,500 places 1,556 on roll 2012/13 1,568 places 1,619 on roll 2013/14 1,568 places 1,620 on roll 2014/15 1,568 places 1,605 on roll 2015/16 1,568 places 1,607 on roll 2016/17 1,568 places 1,610 on roll 2017/18 1,800 places 1,667 on roll 2018/19 1,800 places 1,747 on roll 2020/21 1,980 places 1,995 on roll 2021/22 1,980 places 2,021 on roll 2022/23 1,980 places 2,014 on roll 2023/24 1,980 places 2,007 on roll 2024/25 1,980 places 2,019 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southampton

Postcode SO18 1BU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116458).

Other contested secondary schools in Southampton

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.