School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chesterton Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 121 families who named Chesterton Community College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 293 put it first.

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

1.68

first choices for every place available

293 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chesterton Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Chesterton Community 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

Chesterton Community College turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Chesterton Community 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 1.15 per place 205 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 193 first choices 204 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 211 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 239 first choices 196 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 256 first choices 204 places 2020/21 1.46 per place 269 first choices 184 places 2021/22 1.49 per place 295 first choices 198 places 2022/23 1.48 per place 305 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.39 per place 326 first choices 235 places 2024/25 1.79 per place 335 first choices 187 places 2025/26 1.73 per place 333 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1.68 per place 293 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at Chesterton Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 293 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chesterton Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 205 171 1.15
2016/17 204 193 193 0.95
2017/18 205 211 198 1.03
2018/19 196 239 178 1.22
2019/20 204 256 191 1.25
2020/21 184 269 171 1.46
2021/22 198 295 190 1.49
2022/23 206 305 199 1.48
2023/24 235 326 222 1.39
2024/25 187 335 184 1.79
2025/26 192 333 189 1.73
2026/27 174 293 172 1.68

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

293

633 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.7%

172 of 293

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 174 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

994

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,030

103.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

36

reported as full or beyond

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 Chesterton Community 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 Chesterton Community College 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chesterton Community College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,060 places 923 on roll 2012/13 900 places 918 on roll 2013/14 900 places 904 on roll 2014/15 900 places 923 on roll 2015/16 900 places 936 on roll 2016/17 900 places 960 on roll 2017/18 900 places 971 on roll 2018/19 900 places 970 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 992 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,006 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,042 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,116 on roll 2024/25 1,144 places 1,124 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Chesterton Community College has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Chesterton Community College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 September 2025 Arrangements did not comply ADA4493
16 July 2024 No fault found ADA4351

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 CB4 3NY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136887).

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.