School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodlands Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Woodlands Community College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 192 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

192 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodlands Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodlands Community College, 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

Woodlands Community College 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 Woodlands Community College, 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 0.57 per place 67 first choices 118 places 2016/17 0.62 per place 81 first choices 130 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 87 first choices 122 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 93 first choices 113 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 103 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.52 per place 84 first choices 161 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 106 first choices 163 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 141 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 142 first choices 172 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 165 first choices 168 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 196 first choices 181 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 192 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Woodlands Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodlands Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 118 67 67 0.57
2016/17 130 81 81 0.62
2017/18 122 87 87 0.71
2018/19 113 93 93 0.82
2019/20 178 103 103 0.58
2020/21 161 84 84 0.52
2021/22 163 106 106 0.65
2022/23 180 141 141 0.78
2023/24 172 142 142 0.83
2024/25 168 165 155 0.98
2025/26 181 196 177 1.08
2026/27 180 192 172 1.07

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

365 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.6%

172 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 180 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

1,100

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

81.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

206

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 Woodlands Community College 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 Woodlands Community College reported 206 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.3% 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 Woodlands Community College 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 1,144 places 777 on roll 2010/11 1,144 places 719 on roll 2011/12 1,144 places 704 on roll 2012/13 1,161 places 636 on roll 2013/14 1,161 places 590 on roll 2014/15 1,161 places 555 on roll 2015/16 1,161 places 558 on roll 2016/17 1,161 places 519 on roll 2017/18 1,161 places 566 on roll 2018/19 1,161 places 570 on roll 2020/21 1,161 places 683 on roll 2021/22 1,161 places 773 on roll 2022/23 1,161 places 845 on roll 2023/24 1,161 places 886 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 894 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 5FW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116465).

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.