School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Laurence School?

In 2026/27, St Laurence School offered 219 places and 196 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.

0.89

first choices for every place available

196 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Laurence School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Laurence 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

St Laurence School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 St Laurence 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 1.13 per place 252 first choices 223 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 216 first choices 220 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 253 first choices 225 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 278 first choices 227 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 273 first choices 226 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 221 first choices 230 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 208 first choices 226 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 214 first choices 232 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 209 first choices 215 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 205 first choices 213 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 227 first choices 221 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 196 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at St Laurence School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 196 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Laurence School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 223 252 218 1.13
2016/17 220 216 204 0.98
2017/18 225 253 216 1.12
2018/19 227 278 216 1.22
2019/20 226 273 217 1.21
2020/21 230 221 218 0.96
2021/22 226 208 207 0.92
2022/23 232 214 213 0.92
2023/24 215 209 209 0.97
2024/25 213 205 205 0.96
2025/26 221 227 213 1.03
2026/27 219 196 196 0.89

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

196

310 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

196 of 196

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 215 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

1,120

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,094

97.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

26

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

270

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 St Laurence 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 St Laurence School reported 26 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.7% 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 St Laurence School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,350 places 1,344 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,345 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,357 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,389 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,351 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,352 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,380 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,398 on roll 2020/21 1,390 places 1,425 on roll 2021/22 1,390 places 1,406 on roll 2022/23 1,390 places 1,391 on roll 2023/24 1,390 places 1,367 on roll 2024/25 1,390 places 1,364 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wiltshire

Postcode BA15 1DZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137057).

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.