School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Soham Village College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named Soham Village College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 333 put it first.

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

1.30

first choices for every place available

333 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Soham Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Soham 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

Soham Village College 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 Soham 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 1.09 per place 271 first choices 248 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 308 first choices 263 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 298 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.23 per place 328 first choices 266 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 275 first choices 267 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 301 first choices 268 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 297 first choices 264 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 311 first choices 275 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 317 first choices 262 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 301 first choices 273 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 300 first choices 261 places 2026/27 1.3 per place 333 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Soham Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 333 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Soham 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
2015/16 248 271 240 1.09
2016/17 263 308 261 1.17
2017/18 268 298 264 1.11
2018/19 266 328 263 1.23
2019/20 267 275 264 1.03
2020/21 268 301 264 1.12
2021/22 264 297 262 1.12
2022/23 275 311 273 1.13
2023/24 262 317 262 1.21
2024/25 273 301 272 1.1
2025/26 261 300 258 1.15
2026/27 257 333 256 1.3

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

333

477 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.9%

256 of 333

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 257 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,428

105.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

78

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Soham 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 Soham Village 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Soham Village College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,408 places 1,340 on roll 2011/12 1,408 places 1,347 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,329 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,308 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,303 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,324 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,360 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,371 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,386 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,381 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,381 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,403 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,413 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,428 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 CB7 5AA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136610).

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.