School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lavington School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named Lavington School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 205 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Wiltshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.22

first choices for every place available

205 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lavington School

There is no published appeal success rate for Lavington 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 Wiltshire 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 Wiltshire, 24.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 228 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 Wiltshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wiltshire 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

Lavington 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 Lavington 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 0.9 per place 135 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 176 first choices 154 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 169 first choices 153 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 160 first choices 157 places 2019/20 1.38 per place 218 first choices 158 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 204 first choices 159 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 180 first choices 162 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 190 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 184 first choices 176 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 173 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 202 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 205 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Lavington School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 205 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lavington School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 135 135 0.9
2016/17 154 176 147 1.14
2017/18 153 169 147 1.1
2018/19 157 160 144 1.02
2019/20 158 218 154 1.38
2020/21 159 204 157 1.28
2021/22 162 180 155 1.11
2022/23 179 190 174 1.06
2023/24 176 184 172 1.05
2024/25 181 173 171 0.96
2025/26 175 202 165 1.15
2026/27 168 205 154 1.22

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

205

304 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.1%

154 of 205

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 offers

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

920

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

860

93.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

60

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 Lavington 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 Lavington School reported 60 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.5% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lavington School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 685 places 690 on roll 2011/12 685 places 699 on roll 2012/13 685 places 703 on roll 2013/14 735 places 703 on roll 2014/15 735 places 693 on roll 2015/16 735 places 698 on roll 2016/17 735 places 712 on roll 2017/18 795 places 732 on roll 2018/19 795 places 743 on roll 2020/21 795 places 824 on roll 2021/22 795 places 831 on roll 2022/23 795 places 862 on roll 2023/24 825 places 886 on roll 2024/25 920 places 860 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
Wiltshire

Postcode SN10 4EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136389).

Other contested secondary schools in Wiltshire

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.