School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Southend High School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 158 families who named Southend High School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 177 and 308 put it first.

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

1.74

first choices for every place available

308 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Southend High School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for Southend High School for Boys, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Southend-on-Sea 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 Southend-on-Sea, 4.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 277 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 Southend-on-Sea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southend-on-Sea 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

Southend High School for Boys turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Southend High School for Boys, 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 1.91 per place 279 first choices 146 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 243 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 195 first choices 175 places 2018/19 1.27 per place 228 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 207 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.74 per place 259 first choices 149 places 2021/22 1.69 per place 301 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 228 first choices 178 places 2023/24 1.63 per place 282 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 247 first choices 164 places 2025/26 1.46 per place 259 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.74 per place 308 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at Southend High School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 308 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Southend High School for Boys, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 279 141 1.91
2016/17 178 243 161 1.37
2017/18 175 195 139 1.11
2018/19 179 228 141 1.27
2019/20 172 207 109 1.2
2020/21 149 259 138 1.74
2021/22 178 301 110 1.69
2022/23 178 228 131 1.28
2023/24 173 282 149 1.63
2024/25 164 247 131 1.51
2025/26 178 259 141 1.46
2026/27 177 308 150 1.74

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

308

1,095 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.7%

150 of 308

Offers to families outside the council

35%

62 of 177 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

970

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

898

92.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

72

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Southend High School for Boys 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 Southend High School for Boys reported 72 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.6% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Southend High School for Boys from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,060 places 1,034 on roll 2011/12 1,011 places 1,044 on roll 2012/13 1,060 places 1,059 on roll 2013/14 1,060 places 1,058 on roll 2014/15 1,098 places 1,121 on roll 2015/16 1,260 places 1,187 on roll 2016/17 1,260 places 1,203 on roll 2017/18 1,260 places 1,236 on roll 2018/19 1,260 places 1,255 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,316 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,317 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,315 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,339 on roll 2024/25 1,370 places 1,326 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. Southend High School for Boys has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Southend High School for Boys. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
10 September 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3864

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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southend-on-Sea

Postcode SS0 0RG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136443).

Other contested secondary schools in Southend-on-Sea

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.