School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Mark's Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 65 families who named St Mark's Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 113 and 150 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Southampton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 5 years of official figures.

1.33

first choices for every place available

150 first preferences for 113 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Mark's Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Mark's Church of England 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

St Mark's Church of England School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 5 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Mark's Church of England School, 2022/23 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 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2022/23 0.6 per place 105 first choices 174 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 161 first choices 124 places 2024/25 1.34 per place 153 first choices 114 places 2025/26 1.65 per place 190 first choices 115 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 150 first choices 113 places
First preferences per place at St Mark's Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 150 first preferences for 113 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Mark's Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2022/23 174 105 105 0.6
2023/24 124 161 109 1.3
2024/25 114 153 97 1.34
2025/26 115 190 104 1.65
2026/27 113 150 85 1.33

Places offered

113

in 2026/27

Named first choice

150

473 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56.7%

85 of 150

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 113 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

961

72.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

359

across Years 7 to 11

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 St Mark's Church of England 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 St Mark's Church of England School reported 359 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 72.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Mark's Church of England School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 365 places 314 on roll 2010/11 432 places 397 on roll 2011/12 432 places 429 on roll 2012/13 630 places 484 on roll 2013/14 630 places 484 on roll 2014/15 630 places 475 on roll 2015/16 630 places 461 on roll 2016/17 630 places 475 on roll 2017/18 630 places 456 on roll 2018/19 630 places 438 on roll 2020/21 630 places 400 on roll 2021/22 510 places 415 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 598 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 782 on roll 2024/25 1,320 places 961 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
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southampton

Postcode SO15 5TE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116342).

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.