School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Imberhorne School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Imberhorne School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 270 and 270 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

first choices for every place available

270 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Imberhorne School

There is no published appeal success rate for Imberhorne 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

Imberhorne School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Imberhorne 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 0.97 per place 265 first choices 272 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 229 first choices 237 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 211 first choices 265 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 243 first choices 270 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 306 first choices 270 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 241 first choices 269 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 304 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1 per place 270 first choices 269 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 306 first choices 267 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 249 first choices 269 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 274 first choices 264 places 2026/27 1 per place 270 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at Imberhorne School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 270 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Imberhorne School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 272 265 262 0.97
2016/17 237 229 228 0.97
2017/18 265 211 211 0.8
2018/19 270 243 236 0.9
2019/20 270 306 255 1.13
2020/21 269 241 237 0.9
2021/22 268 304 254 1.13
2022/23 269 270 258 1
2023/24 267 306 259 1.15
2024/25 269 249 246 0.93
2025/26 264 274 249 1.04
2026/27 270 270 250 1

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

270

554 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.6%

250 of 270

Offers to families outside the council

7%

20 of 270 offers

How close you had to live

Imberhorne School filled its places in 2026, and 2,569m — 1.60 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the out area criterion.

Last place offered at

1.60 mi

2,569 metres, 2026

Under criterion

out area

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

1,376

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,310

95.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Imberhorne 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 Imberhorne School reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Imberhorne School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,688 places 1,653 on roll 2010/11 1,688 places 1,683 on roll 2011/12 1,688 places 1,721 on roll 2012/13 1,726 places 1,725 on roll 2013/14 1,726 places 1,680 on roll 2014/15 1,726 places 1,661 on roll 2015/16 1,726 places 1,639 on roll 2016/17 1,726 places 1,595 on roll 2017/18 1,726 places 1,568 on roll 2018/19 1,726 places 1,570 on roll 2020/21 1,726 places 1,549 on roll 2021/22 1,726 places 1,572 on roll 2022/23 1,726 places 1,619 on roll 2023/24 1,726 places 1,600 on roll 2024/25 1,726 places 1,557 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 RH19 1QY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126088).

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.