School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Torquay Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 109 families who named Torquay Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 250 and 342 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

342 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Torquay Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Torquay 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 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

Torquay Academy 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 Torquay Academy, 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 1.13 per place 272 first choices 241 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 305 first choices 249 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 290 first choices 235 places 2018/19 1.31 per place 342 first choices 262 places 2019/20 1.45 per place 382 first choices 263 places 2020/21 1.38 per place 358 first choices 259 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 285 first choices 253 places 2022/23 1.35 per place 345 first choices 255 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 333 first choices 244 places 2024/25 1.49 per place 370 first choices 248 places 2025/26 1.53 per place 371 first choices 243 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 342 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Torquay Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 342 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Torquay Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 241 272 221 1.13
2016/17 249 305 234 1.22
2017/18 235 290 222 1.23
2018/19 262 342 255 1.31
2019/20 263 382 250 1.45
2020/21 259 358 254 1.38
2021/22 253 285 221 1.13
2022/23 255 345 236 1.35
2023/24 244 333 225 1.36
2024/25 248 370 236 1.49
2025/26 243 371 235 1.53
2026/27 250 342 233 1.37

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

342

571 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.1%

233 of 342

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 250 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,260

105% of capacity

Over its capacity by

60

reported as full or beyond

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 Torquay 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 Torquay 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Torquay Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 784 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 879 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 969 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,079 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,180 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,291 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,359 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,456 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,391 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,415 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,447 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,455 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
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Torbay

Postcode TQ2 7NU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138370).

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.