School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Impington Village College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Impington Village College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 267 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

267 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Impington Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Impington 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

Impington Village College turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Impington 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 1.12 per place 220 first choices 197 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 198 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 192 first choices 200 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 254 first choices 203 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 248 first choices 234 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 237 first choices 232 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 252 first choices 224 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 264 first choices 221 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 297 first choices 218 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 246 first choices 213 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 294 first choices 229 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 267 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Impington Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 267 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Impington 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
2015/16 197 220 184 1.12
2016/17 208 198 196 0.95
2017/18 200 192 183 0.96
2018/19 203 254 193 1.25
2019/20 234 248 218 1.06
2020/21 232 237 207 1.02
2021/22 224 252 203 1.12
2022/23 221 264 211 1.19
2023/24 218 297 208 1.36
2024/25 213 246 200 1.15
2025/26 229 294 221 1.28
2026/27 232 267 211 1.15

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

267

584 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79%

211 of 267

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 232 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

1,218

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,200

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

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 Impington 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 Impington Village College reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Impington Village College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,363 places 1,369 on roll 2012/13 1,370 places 1,381 on roll 2013/14 1,370 places 1,411 on roll 2014/15 1,370 places 1,359 on roll 2015/16 1,370 places 1,299 on roll 2016/17 1,370 places 1,316 on roll 2017/18 1,370 places 1,305 on roll 2018/19 1,370 places 1,308 on roll 2020/21 1,370 places 1,431 on roll 2021/22 1,370 places 1,417 on roll 2022/23 1,370 places 1,413 on roll 2023/24 1,370 places 1,437 on roll 2024/25 1,518 places 1,449 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 CB24 9LX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137826).

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.