School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Torquay Boys' Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named Torquay Boys' Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 166 and 215 put it first.

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

1.30

first choices for every place available

215 first preferences for 166 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Torquay Boys' Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Torquay Boys' Grammar School, 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 Boys' Grammar School 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 Boys' Grammar School, 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 1.26 per place 196 first choices 156 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 178 first choices 157 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 179 first choices 168 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 198 first choices 167 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 194 first choices 167 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 184 first choices 165 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 219 first choices 158 places 2022/23 1.38 per place 231 first choices 168 places 2023/24 1.39 per place 230 first choices 165 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 200 first choices 156 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 224 first choices 166 places 2026/27 1.3 per place 215 first choices 166 places
First preferences per place at Torquay Boys' Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 215 first preferences for 166 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Torquay Boys' Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 156 196 156 1.26
2016/17 157 178 155 1.13
2017/18 168 179 160 1.07
2018/19 167 198 165 1.19
2019/20 167 194 158 1.16
2020/21 165 184 160 1.12
2021/22 158 219 150 1.39
2022/23 168 231 167 1.38
2023/24 165 230 164 1.39
2024/25 156 200 155 1.28
2025/26 166 224 163 1.35
2026/27 166 215 160 1.3

Places offered

166

in 2026/27

Named first choice

215

304 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.4%

160 of 215

Offers to families outside the council

75%

125 of 166 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

780

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

825

105.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

45

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

380

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 Boys' Grammar School 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 Boys' Grammar School 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Torquay Boys' Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,160 places 1,110 on roll 2011/12 1,160 places 1,111 on roll 2012/13 1,094 places 1,119 on roll 2013/14 1,160 places 1,121 on roll 2014/15 1,160 places 1,093 on roll 2015/16 1,160 places 1,108 on roll 2016/17 1,160 places 1,099 on roll 2017/18 1,160 places 1,085 on roll 2018/19 1,160 places 1,072 on roll 2020/21 1,160 places 1,087 on roll 2021/22 1,160 places 1,087 on roll 2022/23 1,160 places 1,074 on roll 2023/24 1,160 places 1,089 on roll 2024/25 1,160 places 1,099 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. Torquay Boys' Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Torquay Boys' Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 December 2018 No fault found ADA3352

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
Torbay

Postcode TQ2 7EL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136321).

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.