School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thomas Clarkson Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Thomas Clarkson Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 223 and 239 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

239 first preferences for 223 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thomas Clarkson Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Thomas Clarkson 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

Thomas Clarkson Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Thomas Clarkson 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 0.98 per place 190 first choices 194 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 205 first choices 214 places 2017/18 0.76 per place 139 first choices 184 places 2018/19 0.79 per place 169 first choices 213 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 193 first choices 234 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 208 first choices 250 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 241 first choices 256 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 227 first choices 244 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 247 first choices 245 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 244 first choices 218 places 2025/26 1 per place 221 first choices 222 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 239 first choices 223 places
First preferences per place at Thomas Clarkson Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 239 first preferences for 223 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thomas Clarkson Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 194 190 190 0.98
2016/17 214 205 205 0.96
2017/18 184 139 139 0.76
2018/19 213 169 168 0.79
2019/20 234 193 193 0.82
2020/21 250 208 208 0.83
2021/22 256 241 241 0.94
2022/23 244 227 226 0.93
2023/24 245 247 229 1.01
2024/25 218 244 193 1.12
2025/26 222 221 202 1
2026/27 223 239 212 1.07

Places offered

223

in 2026/27

Named first choice

239

324 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.7%

212 of 239

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 223 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

1,533

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,249

81.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

284

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 Thomas Clarkson 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 Thomas Clarkson Academy reported 284 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.5% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thomas Clarkson Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,500 places 1,286 on roll 2013/14 1,949 places 1,286 on roll 2014/15 1,949 places 1,225 on roll 2015/16 1,949 places 1,260 on roll 2016/17 1,949 places 1,194 on roll 2017/18 1,949 places 1,209 on roll 2018/19 1,949 places 1,198 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,251 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,292 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,369 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,375 on roll 2024/25 1,833 places 1,341 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cambridgeshire

Postcode PE13 2SE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137867).

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.