School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Swavesey Village College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Swavesey Village College as their first choice did not get a place: 245 put it first and 244 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

245 first preferences for 259 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Swavesey Village College

There is no published appeal success rate for Swavesey 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

Swavesey Village College turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Swavesey 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 1.13 per place 265 first choices 235 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 279 first choices 268 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 274 first choices 264 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 253 first choices 250 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 266 first choices 242 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 210 first choices 229 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 256 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 260 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 279 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 281 first choices 239 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 241 first choices 252 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 245 first choices 259 places
First preferences per place at Swavesey Village College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 245 first preferences for 259 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Swavesey 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
2015/16 235 265 233 1.13
2016/17 268 279 263 1.04
2017/18 264 274 264 1.04
2018/19 250 253 247 1.01
2019/20 242 266 239 1.1
2020/21 229 210 210 0.92
2021/22 235 256 230 1.09
2022/23 235 260 220 1.11
2023/24 234 279 228 1.19
2024/25 239 281 236 1.18
2025/26 252 241 241 0.96
2026/27 259 245 244 0.95

Places offered

259

in 2026/27

Named first choice

245

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.6%

244 of 245

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 259 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

1,559

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,235

79.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

324

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 Swavesey 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 Swavesey Village College reported 324 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Swavesey Village College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,200 places 1,215 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,232 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,224 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,227 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,259 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,249 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,269 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,312 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,314 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,272 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,259 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,248 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,252 on roll 2024/25 1,559 places 1,235 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 4RS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136580).

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.