School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Great Western Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Great Western Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 162 put it first and 155 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Swindon actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

162 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Great Western Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Great Western Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Swindon 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 Swindon, 15.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 163 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 Swindon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Swindon 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

Great Western Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Great Western Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 1.64 per place 241 first choices 147 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 204 first choices 144 places 2021/22 1.77 per place 253 first choices 143 places 2022/23 1.68 per place 254 first choices 151 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 207 first choices 170 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 190 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 184 first choices 162 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 162 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Great Western Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 162 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Great Western Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 147 241 144 1.64
2020/21 144 204 143 1.42
2021/22 143 253 138 1.77
2022/23 151 254 149 1.68
2023/24 170 207 167 1.22
2024/25 180 190 171 1.06
2025/26 162 184 153 1.14
2026/27 180 162 155 0.9

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

162

524 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

155 of 162

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

818

109.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

68

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

460

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 Great Western Academy 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 Great Western Academy 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Great Western Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 750 places 151 on roll 2020/21 1,210 places 557 on roll 2021/22 1,210 places 703 on roll 2022/23 1,210 places 880 on roll 2023/24 1,210 places 949 on roll 2024/25 1,210 places 1,018 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Swindon

Postcode SN25 2PP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145883).

Other contested secondary schools in Swindon

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.