School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cromwell Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named Cromwell Community College as their first choice did not get a place: 227 put it first and 222 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

227 first preferences for 234 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cromwell Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Cromwell 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

Cromwell Community College turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Cromwell 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 0.99 per place 192 first choices 194 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 172 first choices 193 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 195 first choices 203 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 263 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 247 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 239 first choices 236 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 207 first choices 213 places 2022/23 1 per place 236 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 273 first choices 228 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 267 first choices 227 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 247 first choices 225 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 227 first choices 234 places
First preferences per place at Cromwell Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 234 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cromwell 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
2015/16 194 192 192 0.99
2016/17 193 172 172 0.89
2017/18 203 195 195 0.96
2018/19 235 263 230 1.12
2019/20 235 247 234 1.05
2020/21 236 239 233 1.01
2021/22 213 207 207 0.97
2022/23 236 236 233 1
2023/24 228 273 226 1.2
2024/25 227 267 226 1.18
2025/26 225 247 223 1.1
2026/27 234 227 222 0.97

Places offered

234

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

329 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.8%

222 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 234 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

1,659

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,382

83.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

277

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

191

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 Cromwell 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 Cromwell Community College reported 277 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.3% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cromwell Community College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,238 places 1,072 on roll 2013/14 1,238 places 1,092 on roll 2014/15 1,238 places 1,096 on roll 2015/16 1,238 places 1,136 on roll 2016/17 1,238 places 1,154 on roll 2017/18 1,238 places 1,149 on roll 2018/19 1,238 places 1,162 on roll 2020/21 1,448 places 1,284 on roll 2021/22 1,448 places 1,336 on roll 2022/23 1,448 places 1,417 on roll 2023/24 1,448 places 1,472 on roll 2024/25 1,850 places 1,526 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 PE16 6UU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138177).

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.