School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bede's Inter-Church School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 115 families who named St Bede's Inter-Church School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 177 and 288 put it first.

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

1.63

first choices for every place available

288 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bede's Inter-Church School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bede's Inter-Church 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

St Bede's Inter-Church 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 St Bede's Inter-Church 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 1.67 per place 267 first choices 160 places 2016/17 1.57 per place 234 first choices 149 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 244 first choices 169 places 2018/19 1.56 per place 270 first choices 173 places 2019/20 1.57 per place 270 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.45 per place 249 first choices 172 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 263 first choices 169 places 2022/23 1.36 per place 236 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.84 per place 327 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.61 per place 268 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.61 per place 281 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.63 per place 288 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at St Bede's Inter-Church School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 288 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bede's Inter-Church School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 160 267 157 1.67
2016/17 149 234 147 1.57
2017/18 169 244 167 1.44
2018/19 173 270 168 1.56
2019/20 172 270 171 1.57
2020/21 172 249 165 1.45
2021/22 169 263 163 1.56
2022/23 173 236 161 1.36
2023/24 178 327 175 1.84
2024/25 166 268 159 1.61
2025/26 174 281 166 1.61
2026/27 177 288 173 1.63

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

288

473 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.1%

173 of 288

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 177 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

1,054

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

936

88.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

118

across Years 7 to 11

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 St Bede's Inter-Church 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 St Bede's Inter-Church School reported 118 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.8% 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 St Bede's Inter-Church School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 851 places 766 on roll 2012/13 851 places 774 on roll 2013/14 851 places 772 on roll 2014/15 851 places 778 on roll 2015/16 851 places 792 on roll 2016/17 851 places 815 on roll 2017/18 851 places 827 on roll 2018/19 851 places 855 on roll 2020/21 900 places 904 on roll 2021/22 900 places 910 on roll 2022/23 900 places 913 on roll 2023/24 900 places 923 on roll 2024/25 1,054 places 936 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. St Bede's Inter-Church School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Bede's Inter-Church School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 October 2011 No fault found VAR540

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cambridgeshire

Postcode CB1 3TD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137924).

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.