School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sandbach School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Sandbach School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 253 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.

1.07

first choices for every place available

253 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sandbach School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sandbach 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 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 School 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 Sandbach 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 0.99 per place 184 first choices 186 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 187 first choices 189 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 199 first choices 207 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 232 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 301 first choices 269 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 226 first choices 236 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 257 first choices 268 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 230 first choices 242 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 276 first choices 240 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 218 first choices 221 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 227 first choices 232 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 253 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Sandbach School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 253 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sandbach School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 186 184 184 0.99
2016/17 189 187 187 0.99
2017/18 207 199 199 0.96
2018/19 239 232 231 0.97
2019/20 269 301 261 1.12
2020/21 236 226 226 0.96
2021/22 268 257 257 0.96
2022/23 242 230 227 0.95
2023/24 240 276 240 1.15
2024/25 221 218 218 0.99
2025/26 232 227 227 0.98
2026/27 236 253 232 1.07

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

253

403 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

232 of 253

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 236 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

1,196

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 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 Sandbach School reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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 Sandbach School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,300 places 1,250 on roll 2012/13 1,214 places 1,210 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,265 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,260 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,247 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,254 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 1,256 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,265 on roll 2020/21 1,450 places 1,401 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,485 on roll 2022/23 1,450 places 1,504 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,500 on roll 2024/25 1,450 places 1,500 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cheshire East

Postcode CW11 3NS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137491).

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.