School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Worthing High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Worthing High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 213 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.

1.04

first choices for every place available

213 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Worthing High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Worthing High 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

Worthing High School 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 Worthing High 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 0.83 per place 145 first choices 175 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 160 first choices 192 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 242 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 300 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.83 per place 378 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 295 first choices 209 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 263 first choices 203 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 268 first choices 211 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 236 first choices 205 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 259 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 246 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 213 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Worthing High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 213 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Worthing High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 175 145 144 0.83
2016/17 192 160 159 0.83
2017/18 209 242 202 1.16
2018/19 233 300 232 1.29
2019/20 207 378 199 1.83
2020/21 209 295 203 1.41
2021/22 203 263 199 1.3
2022/23 211 268 210 1.27
2023/24 205 236 199 1.15
2024/25 203 259 196 1.28
2025/26 205 246 204 1.2
2026/27 205 213 193 1.04

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

213

844 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.6%

193 of 213

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 205 offers

How close you had to live

Worthing High School filled its places in 2026, and 2,259m — 1.40 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

1.40 mi

2,259 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

1,122

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,057

94.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

65

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 Worthing High 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 Worthing High School reported 65 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.2% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Worthing High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,122 places 978 on roll 2013/14 1,122 places 902 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 794 on roll 2015/16 1,152 places 946 on roll 2016/17 1,152 places 922 on roll 2017/18 1,152 places 951 on roll 2018/19 1,152 places 1,041 on roll 2020/21 1,152 places 1,064 on roll 2021/22 1,152 places 1,063 on roll 2022/23 1,122 places 1,070 on roll 2023/24 1,122 places 1,064 on roll 2024/25 1,122 places 1,057 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 BN14 7AR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139109).

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.