School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sawtry Village Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Sawtry Village Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 182 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

182 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sawtry Village Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sawtry Village Academy, 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

Sawtry Village Academy 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 Sawtry Village Academy, 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 0.96 per place 134 first choices 140 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 138 first choices 153 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 93 first choices 109 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 121 first choices 138 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 139 first choices 153 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 145 first choices 157 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 138 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 145 first choices 152 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 171 first choices 167 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 202 first choices 173 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 181 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 182 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Sawtry Village Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 182 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sawtry Village Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 140 134 134 0.96
2016/17 153 138 138 0.9
2017/18 109 93 93 0.85
2018/19 138 121 121 0.88
2019/20 153 139 139 0.91
2020/21 157 145 145 0.92
2021/22 148 138 138 0.93
2022/23 152 145 145 0.95
2023/24 167 171 159 1.02
2024/25 173 202 169 1.17
2025/26 172 181 165 1.05
2026/27 173 182 168 1.05

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

182

275 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.3%

168 of 182

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 173 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

912

79.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

238

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

225

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 Sawtry Village Academy 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 Sawtry Village Academy reported 238 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sawtry Village Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,352 places 1,354 on roll 2012/13 1,375 places 1,348 on roll 2013/14 1,375 places 1,296 on roll 2014/15 1,375 places 1,188 on roll 2015/16 1,375 places 1,049 on roll 2016/17 1,375 places 979 on roll 2017/18 1,375 places 901 on roll 2018/19 1,375 places 855 on roll 2020/21 1,375 places 888 on roll 2021/22 1,375 places 884 on roll 2022/23 1,375 places 917 on roll 2023/24 1,375 places 990 on roll 2024/25 1,375 places 1,084 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 PE28 5TQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136974).

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.