School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 44 families who named Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 265 and 296 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.

1.12

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 265 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing

There is no published appeal success rate for Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing, 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

Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 1 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 Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing, 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 0.97 per place 222 first choices 229 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 229 first choices 245 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 238 first choices 258 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 283 first choices 270 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 260 first choices 269 places 2020/21 1 per place 271 first choices 270 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 253 first choices 268 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 242 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 273 first choices 268 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 256 first choices 268 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 249 first choices 269 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 296 first choices 265 places
First preferences per place at Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 265 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 229 222 219 0.97
2016/17 245 229 229 0.93
2017/18 258 238 238 0.92
2018/19 270 283 253 1.05
2019/20 269 260 221 0.97
2020/21 270 271 241 1
2021/22 268 253 249 0.94
2022/23 264 242 242 0.92
2023/24 268 273 255 1.02
2024/25 268 256 244 0.96
2025/26 269 249 249 0.93
2026/27 265 296 252 1.12

Places offered

265

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

577 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.1%

252 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 265 offers

How close you had to live

Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing filled its places in 2026, and 13,434m — 8.35 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the staff criterion.

Last place offered at

8.35 mi

13,434 metres, 2026

Under criterion

staff

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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,321

97.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

29

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing 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 Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing reported 29 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.9% 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 Davison Church of England High School for Girls, Worthing from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,110 places 1,099 on roll 2010/11 1,110 places 1,099 on roll 2011/12 1,110 places 1,085 on roll 2012/13 1,110 places 1,075 on roll 2013/14 1,110 places 1,055 on roll 2014/15 1,110 places 1,001 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,159 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,164 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,191 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,224 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,309 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,301 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,297 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,321 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,321 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
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode BN11 2JX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126093).

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.