School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Downlands Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Downlands Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 241 and 257 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.

1.07

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 241 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Downlands Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Downlands Community 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 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

Downlands Community School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Downlands Community 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 0.94 per place 196 first choices 208 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 243 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 250 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 279 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 348 first choices 239 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 293 first choices 237 places 2021/22 1.24 per place 294 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 312 first choices 271 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 301 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 282 first choices 242 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 274 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 257 first choices 241 places
First preferences per place at Downlands Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 241 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Downlands Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 196 185 0.94
2016/17 238 243 221 1.02
2017/18 240 250 223 1.04
2018/19 239 279 236 1.17
2019/20 239 348 234 1.46
2020/21 237 293 236 1.24
2021/22 237 294 237 1.24
2022/23 271 312 269 1.15
2023/24 268 301 266 1.12
2024/25 242 282 233 1.17
2025/26 234 274 230 1.17
2026/27 241 257 229 1.07

Places offered

241

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

229 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

5%

13 of 241 offers

How close you had to live

Downlands Community School filled its places in 2026, and 13,233m — 8.22 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

8.22 mi

13,233 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,247

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

47

reported as full or beyond

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 Downlands Community 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 Downlands Community 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Downlands Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,016 places 1,003 on roll 2010/11 1,016 places 1,016 on roll 2011/12 1,016 places 1,027 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,018 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,037 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,022 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,101 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,129 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,197 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,187 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,222 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,256 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,247 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode BN6 8LP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126087).

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.