School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy?

In 2026/27, Royal Wootton Bassett Academy offered 230 places and 222 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.97

first choices for every place available

222 first preferences for 230 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Royal Wootton Bassett Academy, 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

Royal Wootton Bassett Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Royal Wootton Bassett Academy, 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 1.1 per place 306 first choices 279 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 266 first choices 277 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 291 first choices 273 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 350 first choices 274 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 309 first choices 277 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 267 first choices 270 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 283 first choices 285 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 313 first choices 273 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 332 first choices 276 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 270 first choices 278 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 289 first choices 280 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 222 first choices 230 places
First preferences per place at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 222 first preferences for 230 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 279 306 276 1.1
2016/17 277 266 266 0.96
2017/18 273 291 257 1.07
2018/19 274 350 270 1.28
2019/20 277 309 271 1.12
2020/21 270 267 263 0.99
2021/22 285 283 267 0.99
2022/23 273 313 267 1.15
2023/24 276 332 275 1.2
2024/25 278 270 268 0.97
2025/26 280 289 272 1.03
2026/27 230 222 222 0.97

Places offered

230

in 2026/27

Named first choice

222

367 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

222 of 222

Offers to families outside the council

23%

52 of 230 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

1,435

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,434

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 Royal Wootton Bassett Academy 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 Royal Wootton Bassett Academy reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Royal Wootton Bassett Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,611 places 1,490 on roll 2012/13 1,611 places 1,558 on roll 2013/14 1,708 places 1,622 on roll 2014/15 1,708 places 1,657 on roll 2015/16 1,708 places 1,657 on roll 2016/17 1,708 places 1,672 on roll 2017/18 1,708 places 1,763 on roll 2018/19 1,708 places 1,791 on roll 2020/21 1,708 places 1,765 on roll 2021/22 1,735 places 1,742 on roll 2022/23 1,735 places 1,715 on roll 2023/24 1,735 places 1,720 on roll 2024/25 1,735 places 1,686 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 SN4 7HG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136911).

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.