School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 249 and 250 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

250 first preferences for 249 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College

There is no published appeal success rate for Sandbach High School and Sixth Form 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 Cheshire East 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 Cheshire East, 31.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 57 of 181 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 Cheshire East.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cheshire East 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

Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Sandbach High School and Sixth Form 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 0.99 per place 212 first choices 215 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 238 first choices 250 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 264 first choices 271 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 230 first choices 238 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 235 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 269 first choices 260 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 227 first choices 238 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 235 first choices 240 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 225 first choices 240 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 198 first choices 204 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 230 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1 per place 250 first choices 249 places
First preferences per place at Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 250 first preferences for 249 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 215 212 212 0.99
2016/17 250 238 237 0.95
2017/18 271 264 263 0.97
2018/19 238 230 227 0.97
2019/20 240 235 227 0.98
2020/21 260 269 252 1.03
2021/22 238 227 226 0.95
2022/23 240 235 228 0.98
2023/24 240 225 225 0.94
2024/25 204 198 198 0.97
2025/26 234 230 230 0.98
2026/27 249 250 241 1

Places offered

249

in 2026/27

Named first choice

250

403 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.4%

241 of 250

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 249 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,134

94.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

226

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 Sandbach High School and Sixth Form 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 Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.5% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sandbach High School and Sixth Form 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 1,324 places 1,315 on roll 2011/12 1,324 places 1,343 on roll 2012/13 1,285 places 1,369 on roll 2013/14 1,324 places 1,348 on roll 2014/15 1,324 places 1,276 on roll 2015/16 1,324 places 1,274 on roll 2016/17 1,324 places 1,356 on roll 2017/18 1,324 places 1,427 on roll 2018/19 1,324 places 1,434 on roll 2020/21 1,324 places 1,493 on roll 2021/22 1,426 places 1,466 on roll 2022/23 1,426 places 1,390 on roll 2023/24 1,426 places 1,378 on roll 2024/25 1,426 places 1,354 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
Cheshire East

Postcode CW11 3NT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136340).

Other contested secondary schools in Cheshire East

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.