School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bottisham Village College?

In 2026/27, Bottisham Village College offered 250 places and 194 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.78

first choices for every place available

194 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bottisham Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Bottisham Village College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Cambridgeshire 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 Cambridgeshire, 29.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 274 of 936 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 Cambridgeshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cambridgeshire 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

Bottisham Village College turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Bottisham Village College, 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 1.21 per place 249 first choices 205 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 222 first choices 218 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 262 first choices 230 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 247 first choices 211 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 275 first choices 268 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 259 first choices 280 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 259 first choices 280 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 297 first choices 293 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 297 first choices 295 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 299 first choices 290 places 2025/26 0.76 per place 213 first choices 280 places 2026/27 0.78 per place 194 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Bottisham Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 194 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bottisham Village College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 205 249 205 1.21
2016/17 218 222 215 1.02
2017/18 230 262 229 1.14
2018/19 211 247 211 1.17
2019/20 268 275 256 1.03
2020/21 280 259 259 0.93
2021/22 280 259 259 0.93
2022/23 293 297 274 1.01
2023/24 295 297 271 1.01
2024/25 290 299 273 1.03
2025/26 280 213 213 0.76
2026/27 250 194 194 0.78

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

194

340 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

194 of 194

Offers to families outside the council

23%

55 of 235 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

1,592

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,469

92.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

123

across Years 7 to 11

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 Bottisham Village College 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 Bottisham Village College reported 123 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.3% 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 Bottisham Village College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,050 places 1,050 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 1,039 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,047 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,079 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,087 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,099 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,134 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,167 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,278 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,353 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,405 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,459 on roll 2024/25 1,592 places 1,469 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
Cambridgeshire

Postcode CB25 9DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136677).

Other contested secondary schools in Cambridgeshire

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.