School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cleeve Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Cleeve Park School as their first choice did not get a place: 172 put it first and 138 of them were offered one.

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

34

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

172 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cleeve Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cleeve Park 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 Bexley 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 Bexley, 12.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 449 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 Bexley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bexley 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

Cleeve Park School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Cleeve Park 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 0.6 per place 83 first choices 139 places 2016/17 0.66 per place 95 first choices 143 places 2017/18 0.57 per place 95 first choices 166 places 2018/19 0.62 per place 111 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 160 first choices 180 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 165 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 127 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.7 per place 119 first choices 169 places 2023/24 0.72 per place 116 first choices 162 places 2024/25 0.77 per place 148 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 169 first choices 192 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 172 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at Cleeve Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 172 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cleeve Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 139 83 83 0.6
2016/17 143 95 95 0.66
2017/18 166 95 95 0.57
2018/19 178 111 102 0.62
2019/20 180 160 124 0.89
2020/21 176 165 147 0.94
2021/22 180 127 124 0.71
2022/23 169 119 119 0.7
2023/24 162 116 116 0.72
2024/25 191 148 141 0.77
2025/26 192 169 140 0.88
2026/27 188 172 138 0.91

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

172

725 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.2%

138 of 172

Offers to families outside the council

14%

27 of 188 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

865

82.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

185

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

150

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 Cleeve Park 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 Cleeve Park School reported 185 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.4% 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 Cleeve Park School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,040 places 948 on roll 2013/14 1,340 places 911 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 915 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 869 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 858 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 897 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 901 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 988 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 982 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 999 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,008 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 999 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
Bexley

Postcode DA14 4JN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138686).

Other contested secondary schools in Bexley

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.