School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Upper Shirley High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named Upper Shirley High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 215 and 248 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

248 first preferences for 215 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Upper Shirley High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Upper Shirley High 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

Upper Shirley High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Upper Shirley High 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 1.28 per place 196 first choices 153 places 2016/17 1.26 per place 187 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 173 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 200 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.17 per place 237 first choices 203 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 288 first choices 211 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 266 first choices 199 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 230 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1 per place 216 first choices 217 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 202 first choices 200 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 224 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 248 first choices 215 places
First preferences per place at Upper Shirley High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 215 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Upper Shirley High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 153 196 150 1.28
2016/17 149 187 148 1.26
2017/18 177 173 170 0.98
2018/19 178 200 172 1.12
2019/20 203 237 185 1.17
2020/21 211 288 195 1.36
2021/22 199 266 181 1.34
2022/23 207 230 193 1.11
2023/24 217 216 197 1
2024/25 200 202 177 1.01
2025/26 204 224 188 1.1
2026/27 215 248 197 1.15

Places offered

215

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

559 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

197 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 215 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

1,079

102.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

29

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 Upper Shirley High 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 Upper Shirley High 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Upper Shirley High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 650 on roll 2012/13 750 places 709 on roll 2013/14 750 places 743 on roll 2014/15 750 places 753 on roll 2015/16 750 places 766 on roll 2016/17 750 places 765 on roll 2017/18 750 places 791 on roll 2018/19 750 places 820 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 929 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 989 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,025 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,062 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,079 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. Upper Shirley High School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Upper Shirley High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 September 2016 No fault found ADA3123
13 November 2014 No fault found ADA2725

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
Southampton

Postcode SO15 7QU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137037).

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.