School Admission Appeals

School admission appeals in Torbay

Torbay heard 96 school admission appeals in 2026, and 20 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Torbay as a whole, not any single school.

Over the last three years the Torbay success rate has run 1.5 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.

17.9%

of appeals heard in Torbay were upheld

42 of 235 appeals heard in 2024–2026

2026 at a glance

Appeals lodged

119

by parents in Torbay

Appeals heard by a panel

96

81% of those lodged

Appeals upheld

20

20.8% of those heard

England, same year

18.5%

6,414 of 34,711 heard

If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first

Some primary appeals in Torbay are infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.

Too few were heard in Torbay to publish a local rate; across England the figure is 9.4%. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.

The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →

What counts as grounds in Torbay

The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Torbay rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.

Which appeals succeed in Torbay

Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.

Appeals upheld by phase, three-year pooled rate
0% 15% 30% Secondary England 20.1% 17.9% Primary too few appeals to publish a rate Infant class size too few appeals to publish a rate

Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.

View as a table
Appeals heard and upheld by phase, pooled across three years.
Phase Heard Upheld Rate England
Secondary 229 41 17.9% 20.1%
Primary 6 1 too few 17.1%
Infant class size 4 0 too few 9.4%

Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.

Appeals in Torbay, 2016–2026

Appeals upheld, Torbay and England, 2016–2026
0% 12.5% 25% 37.5% 50% 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 18.5% 20.8% 2016 16.9% 22.3% 2017 47.1% 21.8% 2018 13.9% 21.8% 2019 21.3% 22.2% 2020 17.3% 21.2% 2021 15% 19% 2022 32% 20.1% 2023 22.4% 19.8% 2024 11.9% 20% 2025 21.8% 19.4% 2026 20.8% 18.5%
View as a table
Appeals heard and upheld in Torbay, by year. A rate is shown only where at least 10 appeals were heard.
Year Heard Upheld Torbay England
2016 65 11 16.9% 22.3%
2017 17 8 47.1% 21.8%
2018 36 5 13.9% 21.8%
2019 61 13 21.3% 22.2%
2020 52 9 17.3% 21.2%
2021 40 6 15% 19%
2022 25 8 32% 20.1%
2023 49 11 22.4% 19.8%
2024 84 10 11.9% 20%
2025 55 12 21.8% 19.4%
2026 96 20 20.8% 18.5%

How Torbay compares

Success rate ranking

76 of 151

English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.

Appeal volume ranking

125 of 151

by number of appeals heard over the same period — 235 in total.

Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.

Schools in Torbay

Torbay has 39 state-funded mainstream schools — 31 primary and 8 secondary. The largest concentrations are in Torquay, Paignton and Brixham.

What we can't tell you

Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.

Where places are hardest to get

What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Torbay schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.

Most contested secondary schools in Torbay, 2026/27
School Places First choices Per place
Churston Ferrers Grammar School Academy 159 228 1.43
Torquay Academy 250 342 1.37
Torquay Boys' Grammar School 166 215 1.30
Torquay Girls' Grammar School 191 247 1.29
The Spires College 194 199 1.03
Most contested primary schools in Torbay, 2026/27
School Places First choices Per place
Preston Primary School 45 72 1.60
Ilsham Church of England Academy 25 33 1.32
Galmpton Church of England Primary School 30 39 1.30
Shiphay Learning Academy 30 34 1.13
St Margaret's Academy 34 35 1.03
Lift Barton Hill 56 56 1
Torre Church of England Academy 39 37 0.95
Watcombe Primary School 27 25 0.93

Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.

Admission rules challenged in Torbay

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. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 2 objections about schools in Torbay, and found the arrangements did not comply in 0.

Too few to quote as a rate — the national figure is 68.3%.

Most recent determinations about schools in Torbay. Each links to the determination on GOV.UK.
School or authority Determined Outcome
Churston Ferrers Grammar School 11 October 2021 Complied
Torquay Boys’ Grammar School 12 December 2018 Complied

Torbay does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.

How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.

Other councils in South West