School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Caludon Castle School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Caludon Castle School as their first choice did not get a place: 236 put it first and 213 of them were offered one.

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

23

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

236 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Caludon Castle School

There is no published appeal success rate for Caludon Castle 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 Coventry 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 Coventry, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 224 of 1,056 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 Coventry.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Coventry 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

Caludon Castle School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Caludon Castle 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 1.21 per place 289 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.43 per place 342 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 353 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.65 per place 396 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 388 first choices 269 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 325 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.52 per place 365 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 340 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 323 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1 per place 268 first choices 268 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 248 first choices 240 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 236 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at Caludon Castle School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 236 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Caludon Castle School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 289 222 1.21
2016/17 240 342 227 1.43
2017/18 240 353 233 1.47
2018/19 240 396 225 1.65
2019/20 269 388 255 1.44
2020/21 240 325 232 1.35
2021/22 240 365 224 1.52
2022/23 240 340 231 1.42
2023/24 240 323 223 1.35
2024/25 268 268 238 1
2025/26 240 248 223 1.03
2026/27 238 236 213 0.99

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

236

574 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.3%

213 of 236

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 238 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

1,228

102.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

28

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

315

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 Caludon Castle 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 Caludon Castle School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Caludon Castle School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,445 places 1,503 on roll 2013/14 1,445 places 1,526 on roll 2014/15 1,445 places 1,515 on roll 2015/16 1,445 places 1,510 on roll 2016/17 1,445 places 1,522 on roll 2017/18 1,515 places 1,514 on roll 2018/19 1,515 places 1,514 on roll 2020/21 1,515 places 1,542 on roll 2021/22 1,515 places 1,552 on roll 2022/23 1,515 places 1,561 on roll 2023/24 1,515 places 1,553 on roll 2024/25 1,515 places 1,509 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
Coventry

Postcode CV2 5BD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139292).

Other contested secondary schools in Coventry

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.