School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ely College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named Ely College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 261 and 304 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

304 first preferences for 261 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ely College

There is no published appeal success rate for Ely 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

Ely College turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Ely 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 0.93 per place 219 first choices 235 places 2016/17 0.82 per place 167 first choices 203 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 159 first choices 184 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 169 first choices 202 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 221 first choices 233 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 256 first choices 263 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 256 first choices 263 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 294 first choices 292 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 312 first choices 259 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 277 first choices 259 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 252 first choices 258 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 304 first choices 261 places
First preferences per place at Ely College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 304 first preferences for 261 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ely College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 235 219 219 0.93
2016/17 203 167 167 0.82
2017/18 184 159 159 0.86
2018/19 202 169 169 0.84
2019/20 233 221 221 0.95
2020/21 263 256 247 0.97
2021/22 263 256 252 0.97
2022/23 292 294 275 1.01
2023/24 259 312 249 1.2
2024/25 259 277 254 1.07
2025/26 258 252 250 0.98
2026/27 261 304 251 1.16

Places offered

261

in 2026/27

Named first choice

304

417 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.6%

251 of 304

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 261 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 137779.

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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,384

102.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Ely 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 Ely 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 Ely College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,421 places 1,282 on roll 2012/13 1,298 places 1,249 on roll 2013/14 1,421 places 1,315 on roll 2014/15 1,571 places 1,271 on roll 2015/16 1,571 places 1,195 on roll 2016/17 1,298 places 1,097 on roll 2017/18 1,298 places 1,085 on roll 2018/19 1,298 places 1,104 on roll 2020/21 1,298 places 1,292 on roll 2021/22 1,298 places 1,421 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,545 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,619 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,637 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 CB6 2SH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143404).

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.