School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cressex Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Cressex Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 145 and 168 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

168 first preferences for 145 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cressex Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cressex Community 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 Buckinghamshire 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 Buckinghamshire, 12% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 182 of 1,519 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 Buckinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Buckinghamshire 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

Cressex Community School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Cressex Community 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 0.61 per place 92 first choices 152 places 2016/17 0.71 per place 101 first choices 142 places 2017/18 0.72 per place 99 first choices 137 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 125 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 162 first choices 140 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 148 first choices 141 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 128 first choices 144 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 153 first choices 137 places 2023/24 1.33 per place 186 first choices 140 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 155 first choices 145 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 178 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 168 first choices 145 places
First preferences per place at Cressex Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 145 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cressex Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 152 92 88 0.61
2016/17 142 101 97 0.71
2017/18 137 99 90 0.72
2018/19 149 125 99 0.84
2019/20 140 162 103 1.16
2020/21 141 148 93 1.05
2021/22 144 128 86 0.89
2022/23 137 153 100 1.12
2023/24 140 186 109 1.33
2024/25 145 155 106 1.07
2025/26 144 178 106 1.24
2026/27 145 168 106 1.16

Places offered

145

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

453 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63.1%

106 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 145 offers

How close you had to live

Cressex Community School filled its places in 2026, and 1,915m — 1.19 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 — Catchment, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.19 mi

1,915 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

Catchment

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Buckinghamshire Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Cressex Community School published for 2025 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Cressex Community School, 2025 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children and all previously looked after children who apply for a place at the school. This includes children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (see 11.3, 11.4 and 11.7).
2 Children who have exceptional medical or social needs supported by written evidence from a doctor, social worker, educational welfare officer or other appropriate person (see 11.8).
3 Children of staff where either:
a. The member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or
b. The member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage (see 11.9). 4. Siblings (see 11.12), living within the catchment area of the school (see 11.11), of children who are on the roll of the school at the time allocations are made and are expected to be on the school roll at the time of the proposed admission (see 11.13).
4 Other children living within the catchment area of the school (see 11.11).
5 Siblings (see 11.12), living outside the catchment area of the school (see 11.11), of children who are on the roll of the school at the time allocations are made and are expected to be on the school roll at the time of the proposed admission (see 11.13).
6 Once the above rules have been applied then any further places will be offered in distance order; using the distance between the child's Normal Home Address (see 11.14) and the school's nearest open entrance gate offering the closest first. We use a straight-line distance (see 11.15).

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2025 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Cressex Community School's determined admission arrangements for 2025 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

756

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

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 Cressex Community 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 Cressex Community School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cressex Community School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 803 places 502 on roll 2010/11 960 places 498 on roll 2011/12 1,021 places 522 on roll 2012/13 1,021 places 603 on roll 2013/14 960 places 682 on roll 2014/15 951 places 719 on roll 2015/16 912 places 744 on roll 2016/17 750 places 754 on roll 2017/18 750 places 745 on roll 2018/19 750 places 758 on roll 2020/21 750 places 751 on roll 2021/22 750 places 759 on roll 2022/23 750 places 756 on roll 2023/24 750 places 762 on roll 2024/25 750 places 756 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Buckinghamshire

Postcode HP12 4QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 110500).

Other contested secondary schools in Buckinghamshire

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.