School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ifield Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Ifield Community College as their first choice did not get a place: 209 put it first and 182 of them were offered one.

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

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

209 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ifield Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Ifield Community College, 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

Ifield Community College turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 5 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 Ifield Community College, 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 0.79 per place 119 first choices 151 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 137 first choices 160 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 147 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 123 first choices 167 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 187 first choices 209 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 186 first choices 209 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 213 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.36 per place 282 first choices 208 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 252 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 202 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 253 first choices 236 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 209 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Ifield Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ifield Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 151 119 119 0.79
2016/17 160 137 137 0.86
2017/18 180 147 141 0.82
2018/19 167 123 123 0.74
2019/20 209 187 161 0.89
2020/21 209 186 164 0.89
2021/22 240 213 180 0.89
2022/23 208 282 186 1.36
2023/24 208 252 173 1.21
2024/25 206 202 170 0.98
2025/26 236 253 192 1.07
2026/27 235 209 182 0.89

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

540 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.1%

182 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 235 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 126071.

How close you had to live

Ifield Community College filled its places in 2026, and 2,023m — 1.26 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.26 mi

2,023 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

as numbered by the school

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

989

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,079

109.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

90

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Ifield Community College 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 Ifield Community College 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 Ifield Community College 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 1,121 places 1,096 on roll 2010/11 1,121 places 1,088 on roll 2011/12 1,121 places 1,073 on roll 2012/13 1,188 places 1,066 on roll 2013/14 1,188 places 1,050 on roll 2014/15 1,188 places 1,030 on roll 2015/16 1,188 places 1,008 on roll 2016/17 1,189 places 1,001 on roll 2017/18 1,189 places 1,021 on roll 2018/19 1,189 places 999 on roll 2020/21 1,189 places 1,138 on roll 2021/22 1,189 places 1,189 on roll 2022/23 1,189 places 1,187 on roll 2023/24 1,189 places 1,223 on roll 2024/25 1,189 places 1,194 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode RH11 0DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150094).

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.