School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Spires College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 65 families who named The Spires College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 194 and 199 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 194 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Spires College

There is no published appeal success rate for The Spires 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 Torbay 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 Torbay, 17.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 41 of 229 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 Torbay.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Torbay 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

The Spires College turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at The Spires 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 0.67 per place 95 first choices 141 places 2016/17 0.64 per place 104 first choices 163 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 102 first choices 140 places 2018/19 0.71 per place 146 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.69 per place 166 first choices 241 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 198 first choices 203 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 235 first choices 201 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 223 first choices 197 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 199 first choices 209 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 223 first choices 195 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 213 first choices 218 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 199 first choices 194 places
First preferences per place at The Spires College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 194 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Spires College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 95 95 0.67
2016/17 163 104 104 0.64
2017/18 140 102 102 0.73
2018/19 207 146 145 0.71
2019/20 241 166 165 0.69
2020/21 203 198 165 0.98
2021/22 201 235 171 1.17
2022/23 197 223 150 1.13
2023/24 209 199 157 0.95
2024/25 195 223 161 1.14
2025/26 218 213 167 0.98
2026/27 194 199 134 1.03

Places offered

194

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

561 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.3%

134 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

10%

20 of 194 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

1,023

93% of capacity

Unfilled places

77

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 The Spires 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 The Spires College reported 77 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93% 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 The Spires College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,409 places 1,357 on roll 2010/11 1,409 places 1,318 on roll 2011/12 1,492 places 1,296 on roll 2012/13 1,509 places 1,271 on roll 2013/14 1,509 places 1,203 on roll 2014/15 1,278 places 1,018 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 918 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 890 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 865 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 966 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,129 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,106 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,155 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,140 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,129 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
Torbay

Postcode TQ1 3PE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 113526).

Other contested secondary schools in Torbay

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.