School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Redbridge Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Redbridge Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 223 and 230 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

230 first preferences for 223 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Redbridge Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Redbridge 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 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

Redbridge Community School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Redbridge 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 0.94 per place 192 first choices 204 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 190 first choices 206 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 165 first choices 197 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 153 first choices 177 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 158 first choices 200 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 175 first choices 206 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 176 first choices 202 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 193 first choices 202 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 185 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 211 first choices 206 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 174 first choices 199 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 230 first choices 223 places
First preferences per place at Redbridge Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 230 first preferences for 223 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Redbridge 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
2015/16 204 192 192 0.94
2016/17 206 190 190 0.92
2017/18 197 165 165 0.84
2018/19 177 153 153 0.86
2019/20 200 158 158 0.79
2020/21 206 175 175 0.85
2021/22 202 176 176 0.87
2022/23 202 193 193 0.96
2023/24 202 185 185 0.92
2024/25 206 211 192 1.02
2025/26 199 174 174 0.87
2026/27 223 230 219 1.03

Places offered

223

in 2026/27

Named first choice

230

320 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.2%

219 of 230

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,117

106.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

67

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Redbridge 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 Redbridge Community 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 Redbridge Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 946 on roll 2010/11 1,084 places 959 on roll 2011/12 1,084 places 1,001 on roll 2012/13 1,084 places 992 on roll 2013/14 1,084 places 1,018 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,000 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,002 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 993 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 994 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,004 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,042 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,053 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,071 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,095 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,117 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 SO16 9RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116453).

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.