School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Comberton Village College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named Comberton Village College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 281 and 309 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

309 first preferences for 281 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Comberton Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Comberton 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

Comberton Village 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 Comberton 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 0.97 per place 224 first choices 231 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 273 first choices 246 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 269 first choices 251 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 294 first choices 274 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 301 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.27 per place 313 first choices 247 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 297 first choices 247 places 2022/23 1.37 per place 347 first choices 254 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 333 first choices 267 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 312 first choices 256 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 324 first choices 275 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 309 first choices 281 places
First preferences per place at Comberton Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 309 first preferences for 281 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Comberton 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
2015/16 231 224 218 0.97
2016/17 246 273 241 1.11
2017/18 251 269 242 1.07
2018/19 274 294 261 1.07
2019/20 235 301 228 1.28
2020/21 247 313 245 1.27
2021/22 247 297 244 1.2
2022/23 254 347 251 1.37
2023/24 267 333 261 1.25
2024/25 256 312 255 1.22
2025/26 275 324 270 1.18
2026/27 281 309 277 1.1

Places offered

281

in 2026/27

Named first choice

309

607 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.6%

277 of 309

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 281 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,482

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

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 Comberton 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 Comberton Village College reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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 Comberton Village College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,850 places 1,438 on roll 2011/12 1,854 places 1,633 on roll 2012/13 1,851 places 1,783 on roll 2013/14 1,851 places 1,749 on roll 2014/15 1,851 places 1,741 on roll 2015/16 1,851 places 1,703 on roll 2016/17 1,851 places 1,676 on roll 2017/18 1,851 places 1,652 on roll 2018/19 1,851 places 1,803 on roll 2020/21 1,851 places 1,950 on roll 2021/22 1,851 places 1,943 on roll 2022/23 1,850 places 1,927 on roll 2023/24 1,850 places 1,926 on roll 2024/25 1,850 places 1,969 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 CB23 7DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136463).

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.