School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Corsham School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named The Corsham School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 222 and 229 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

229 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Corsham School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Corsham 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

The Corsham School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 The Corsham 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 0.95 per place 191 first choices 202 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 174 first choices 182 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 156 first choices 166 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 145 first choices 163 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 148 first choices 165 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 172 first choices 195 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 200 first choices 213 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 246 first choices 253 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 215 first choices 222 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 252 first choices 250 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 248 first choices 244 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 229 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at The Corsham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 229 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Corsham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 202 191 191 0.95
2016/17 182 174 174 0.96
2017/18 166 156 156 0.94
2018/19 163 145 145 0.89
2019/20 165 148 148 0.9
2020/21 195 172 172 0.88
2021/22 213 200 200 0.94
2022/23 253 246 246 0.97
2023/24 222 215 215 0.97
2024/25 250 252 243 1.01
2025/26 244 248 233 1.02
2026/27 222 229 214 1.03

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

229

323 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.4%

214 of 229

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 222 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

1,300

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,187

91.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

113

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

336

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 The Corsham 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 The Corsham School reported 113 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.3% 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 The Corsham School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,415 places 1,416 on roll 2011/12 1,536 places 1,376 on roll 2012/13 1,536 places 1,354 on roll 2013/14 1,536 places 1,329 on roll 2014/15 1,536 places 1,300 on roll 2015/16 1,536 places 1,246 on roll 2016/17 1,536 places 1,200 on roll 2017/18 1,536 places 1,151 on roll 2018/19 1,536 places 1,105 on roll 2020/21 1,626 places 1,132 on roll 2021/22 1,636 places 1,171 on roll 2022/23 1,636 places 1,236 on roll 2023/24 1,636 places 1,273 on roll 2024/25 1,636 places 1,353 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 SN13 9DF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136611).

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.