School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 63 families who named Bishop Luffa School, Chichester as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 287 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

287 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Luffa School, Chichester, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for West Sussex 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 West Sussex, 19.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 239 of 1,199 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 West Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not West Sussex 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

Bishop Luffa School, Chichester 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 Bishop Luffa School, Chichester, 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 1.1 per place 243 first choices 220 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 248 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 277 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 249 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.59 per place 381 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.44 per place 343 first choices 238 places 2021/22 1.43 per place 341 first choices 239 places 2022/23 1.31 per place 308 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.39 per place 325 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.45 per place 354 first choices 244 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 351 first choices 238 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 287 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 287 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 220 243 214 1.1
2016/17 239 248 237 1.04
2017/18 240 277 239 1.15
2018/19 239 249 230 1.04
2019/20 240 381 239 1.59
2020/21 238 343 228 1.44
2021/22 239 341 233 1.43
2022/23 236 308 222 1.31
2023/24 233 325 224 1.39
2024/25 244 354 236 1.45
2025/26 238 351 238 1.47
2026/27 232 287 224 1.24

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

287

659 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78%

224 of 287

Offers to families outside the council

5%

11 of 232 offers

How close you had to live

Bishop Luffa School, Chichester filled its places in 2026, and 798m — 0.50 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the c, 4 criterion.

Last place offered at

0.50 mi

798 metres, 2026

Under criterion

C, 4

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

West Sussex Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,219

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,213

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Bishop Luffa School, Chichester 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 Bishop Luffa School, Chichester reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bishop Luffa School, Chichester from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,401 places 1,410 on roll 2014/15 1,401 places 1,416 on roll 2015/16 1,401 places 1,413 on roll 2016/17 1,401 places 1,447 on roll 2017/18 1,519 places 1,446 on roll 2018/19 1,519 places 1,462 on roll 2020/21 1,519 places 1,516 on roll 2021/22 1,519 places 1,509 on roll 2022/23 1,519 places 1,545 on roll 2023/24 1,519 places 1,595 on roll 2024/25 1,519 places 1,573 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
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode PO19 3HP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140472).

Other contested secondary schools in West Sussex

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.