School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Weald School, The?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Weald School, The as their first choice did not get a place: 273 put it first and 266 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.

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

273 first preferences for 291 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Weald School, The

There is no published appeal success rate for Weald School, The, 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

Weald School, The turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Weald School, The, 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 1.14 per place 308 first choices 271 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 293 first choices 266 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 307 first choices 300 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 332 first choices 300 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 327 first choices 300 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 323 first choices 320 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 322 first choices 299 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 349 first choices 300 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 311 first choices 294 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 294 first choices 305 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 312 first choices 301 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 273 first choices 291 places
First preferences per place at Weald School, The. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 273 first preferences for 291 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Weald School, The, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 271 308 264 1.14
2016/17 266 293 256 1.1
2017/18 300 307 295 1.02
2018/19 300 332 292 1.11
2019/20 300 327 283 1.09
2020/21 320 323 293 1.01
2021/22 299 322 297 1.08
2022/23 300 349 293 1.16
2023/24 294 311 285 1.06
2024/25 305 294 282 0.96
2025/26 301 312 289 1.04
2026/27 291 273 266 0.94

Places offered

291

in 2026/27

Named first choice

273

506 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.4%

266 of 273

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 of 291 offers

How close you had to live

Weald School, The filled its places in 2026, and 11,519m — 7.16 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

7.16 mi

11,519 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,485

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Weald School, The 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 Weald School, The reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Weald School, The 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 1,504 places 1,515 on roll 2010/11 1,504 places 1,516 on roll 2011/12 1,504 places 1,497 on roll 2012/13 1,641 places 1,527 on roll 2013/14 1,641 places 1,539 on roll 2014/15 1,641 places 1,547 on roll 2015/16 1,641 places 1,606 on roll 2016/17 1,641 places 1,617 on roll 2017/18 1,800 places 1,668 on roll 2018/19 1,800 places 1,713 on roll 2020/21 1,800 places 1,796 on roll 2021/22 1,800 places 1,794 on roll 2022/23 1,800 places 1,734 on roll 2023/24 1,800 places 1,738 on roll 2024/25 1,800 places 1,787 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 RH14 9RY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126068).

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.