School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Academy, Selsey?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named The Academy, Selsey as their first choice did not get a place: 111 put it first and 107 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.

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

111 first preferences for 116 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Academy, Selsey

There is no published appeal success rate for The Academy, Selsey, 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

The Academy, Selsey turned first-choice families away in 1 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 The Academy, Selsey, 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 0.85 per place 46 first choices 54 places 2016/17 1 per place 66 first choices 66 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 56 first choices 60 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 74 first choices 75 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 94 first choices 104 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 83 first choices 87 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 88 first choices 95 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 92 first choices 98 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 93 first choices 134 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 84 first choices 100 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 122 first choices 117 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 111 first choices 116 places
First preferences per place at The Academy, Selsey. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 111 first preferences for 116 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Academy, Selsey, 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 54 46 46 0.85
2016/17 66 66 66 1
2017/18 60 56 56 0.93
2018/19 75 74 74 0.99
2019/20 104 94 94 0.9
2020/21 87 83 83 0.95
2021/22 95 88 88 0.93
2022/23 98 92 92 0.94
2023/24 134 93 93 0.69
2024/25 100 84 84 0.84
2025/26 117 122 111 1.04
2026/27 116 111 107 0.96

Places offered

116

in 2026/27

Named first choice

111

147 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.4%

107 of 111

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 116 offers

How close you had to live

The Academy, Selsey filled its places in 2026, and 8,222m — 5.11 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

5.11 mi

8,222 metres, 2026

Under criterion

6

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

785

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

494

62.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

291

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 The Academy, Selsey 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 The Academy, Selsey reported 291 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 62.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Academy, Selsey from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 646 places 592 on roll 2012/13 785 places 559 on roll 2013/14 785 places 522 on roll 2014/15 785 places 449 on roll 2015/16 785 places 400 on roll 2016/17 785 places 392 on roll 2017/18 785 places 377 on roll 2018/19 785 places 365 on roll 2020/21 785 places 419 on roll 2021/22 785 places 438 on roll 2022/23 785 places 476 on roll 2023/24 785 places 492 on roll 2024/25 785 places 494 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode PO20 9EH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137096).

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.