School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hinchingbrooke School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 97 families who named Hinchingbrooke School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 329 and 423 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

423 first preferences for 329 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hinchingbrooke School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hinchingbrooke School, 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

Hinchingbrooke School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Hinchingbrooke School, 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 1.12 per place 329 first choices 293 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 360 first choices 290 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 341 first choices 296 places 2018/19 1.32 per place 391 first choices 297 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 358 first choices 287 places 2020/21 1.31 per place 385 first choices 293 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 357 first choices 341 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 392 first choices 331 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 422 first choices 328 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 412 first choices 342 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 411 first choices 323 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 423 first choices 329 places
First preferences per place at Hinchingbrooke School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 423 first preferences for 329 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hinchingbrooke School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 293 329 287 1.12
2016/17 290 360 286 1.24
2017/18 296 341 292 1.15
2018/19 297 391 294 1.32
2019/20 287 358 283 1.25
2020/21 293 385 288 1.31
2021/22 341 357 334 1.05
2022/23 331 392 323 1.18
2023/24 328 422 324 1.29
2024/25 342 412 338 1.2
2025/26 323 411 315 1.27
2026/27 329 423 326 1.29

Places offered

329

in 2026/27

Named first choice

423

673 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.1%

326 of 423

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 329 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

1,555

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,698

109.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

143

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

450

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 Hinchingbrooke School 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 Hinchingbrooke School 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 Hinchingbrooke School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,935 places 1,916 on roll 2012/13 2,005 places 1,875 on roll 2013/14 1,935 places 1,870 on roll 2014/15 1,935 places 1,858 on roll 2015/16 1,935 places 1,870 on roll 2016/17 1,935 places 1,890 on roll 2017/18 1,935 places 1,883 on roll 2018/19 1,935 places 1,880 on roll 2020/21 2,005 places 1,894 on roll 2021/22 2,005 places 1,947 on roll 2022/23 2,005 places 1,993 on roll 2023/24 2,005 places 2,051 on roll 2024/25 2,005 places 2,109 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 PE29 3BN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137475).

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.