School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cambourne Village College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Cambourne Village College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 289 and 344 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

344 first preferences for 289 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cambourne Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Cambourne 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

Cambourne Village College turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Cambourne 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 1.03 per place 151 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1 per place 206 first choices 207 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 182 first choices 191 places 2018/19 1.08 per place 225 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1 per place 247 first choices 248 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 235 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 256 first choices 251 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 259 first choices 255 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 254 first choices 279 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 291 first choices 281 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 291 first choices 279 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 344 first choices 289 places
First preferences per place at Cambourne Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 344 first preferences for 289 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cambourne 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
2015/16 147 151 144 1.03
2016/17 207 206 202 1
2017/18 191 182 182 0.95
2018/19 208 225 207 1.08
2019/20 248 247 241 1
2020/21 240 235 231 0.98
2021/22 251 256 247 1.02
2022/23 255 259 235 1.02
2023/24 279 254 254 0.91
2024/25 281 291 270 1.04
2025/26 279 291 272 1.04
2026/27 289 344 282 1.19

Places offered

289

in 2026/27

Named first choice

344

519 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82%

282 of 344

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 289 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

1,586

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,388

87.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

198

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Cambourne 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 Cambourne Village College reported 198 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.5% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cambourne Village College from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 750 places 144 on roll 2014/15 750 places 314 on roll 2015/16 750 places 500 on roll 2016/17 750 places 729 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 967 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,170 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,228 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,309 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,380 on roll 2024/25 1,936 places 1,462 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cambridgeshire

Postcode CB23 6FR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139408).

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.