School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Forest School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Forest School as their first choice did not get a place: 204 put it first and 185 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.

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

204 first preferences for 216 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Forest School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Forest 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

The Forest School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 2 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 The Forest 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 0.84 per place 187 first choices 223 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 194 first choices 214 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 193 first choices 226 places 2018/19 0.79 per place 194 first choices 246 places 2019/20 0.86 per place 198 first choices 230 places 2020/21 0.63 per place 130 first choices 206 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 169 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.68 per place 153 first choices 226 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 191 first choices 223 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 283 first choices 234 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 231 first choices 234 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 204 first choices 216 places
First preferences per place at The Forest School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 204 first preferences for 216 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Forest School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 223 187 186 0.84
2016/17 214 194 194 0.91
2017/18 226 193 193 0.85
2018/19 246 194 194 0.79
2019/20 230 198 177 0.86
2020/21 206 130 130 0.63
2021/22 199 169 169 0.85
2022/23 226 153 153 0.68
2023/24 223 191 171 0.86
2024/25 234 283 218 1.21
2025/26 234 231 218 0.99
2026/27 216 204 185 0.94

Places offered

216

in 2026/27

Named first choice

204

766 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.7%

185 of 204

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 216 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 126065.

How close you had to live

The Forest School filled its places in 2026, and 4,011m — 2.49 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4c , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.49 mi

4,011 metres, 2026

Under criterion

4c

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

1,140

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,094

96% of capacity

Unfilled places

46

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 Forest 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 The Forest School reported 46 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96% 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 The Forest School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,169 places 1,072 on roll 2010/11 1,169 places 1,049 on roll 2011/12 1,169 places 1,056 on roll 2012/13 1,140 places 1,063 on roll 2013/14 1,140 places 1,048 on roll 2014/15 1,140 places 1,064 on roll 2015/16 1,140 places 1,107 on roll 2016/17 1,140 places 1,099 on roll 2017/18 1,140 places 1,087 on roll 2018/19 1,140 places 1,115 on roll 2020/21 1,140 places 1,047 on roll 2021/22 1,140 places 1,012 on roll 2022/23 1,140 places 1,034 on roll 2023/24 1,140 places 1,051 on roll 2024/25 1,140 places 1,094 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 RH13 5NT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151923).

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.