School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Torquay Girls' Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 67 families who named Torquay Girls' Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 191 and 247 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

247 first preferences for 191 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Torquay Girls' Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Torquay Girls' 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 Girls' 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 Girls' 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 1.28 per place 192 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.21 per place 177 first choices 146 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 174 first choices 148 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 185 first choices 155 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 200 first choices 154 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 176 first choices 154 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 207 first choices 155 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 189 first choices 154 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 218 first choices 160 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 200 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.29 per place 242 first choices 188 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 247 first choices 191 places
First preferences per place at Torquay Girls' Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 191 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Torquay Girls' 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
2015/16 150 192 150 1.28
2016/17 146 177 140 1.21
2017/18 148 174 147 1.18
2018/19 155 185 153 1.19
2019/20 154 200 151 1.3
2020/21 154 176 142 1.14
2021/22 155 207 151 1.34
2022/23 154 189 152 1.23
2023/24 160 218 157 1.36
2024/25 150 200 150 1.33
2025/26 188 242 182 1.29
2026/27 191 247 180 1.29

Places offered

191

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

352 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.9%

180 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

79%

151 of 191 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

789

82.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

171

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Girls' 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 Girls' Grammar School reported 171 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Torquay Girls' Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 900 places 859 on roll 2011/12 877 places 850 on roll 2012/13 865 places 864 on roll 2013/14 900 places 892 on roll 2014/15 1,002 places 874 on roll 2015/16 1,070 places 884 on roll 2016/17 900 places 933 on roll 2017/18 900 places 934 on roll 2018/19 900 places 947 on roll 2020/21 900 places 987 on roll 2021/22 900 places 990 on roll 2022/23 900 places 996 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,008 on roll 2024/25 1,360 places 1,022 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 converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Torbay

Postcode TQ2 7DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136506).

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.