School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Caldew School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Caldew School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 164 and 180 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

180 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Caldew School

There is no published appeal success rate for Caldew 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 Cumberland 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 Cumberland, 52.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 76 of 145 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 Cumberland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cumberland 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

Caldew School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Caldew 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 1.3 per place 236 first choices 181 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 183 first choices 171 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 202 first choices 174 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 163 first choices 170 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 127 first choices 134 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 132 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 166 first choices 164 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 139 first choices 159 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 159 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 193 first choices 160 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 183 first choices 165 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 180 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Caldew School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Caldew School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 181 236 177 1.3
2016/17 171 183 157 1.07
2017/18 174 202 168 1.16
2018/19 170 163 162 0.96
2019/20 134 127 126 0.95
2020/21 156 132 132 0.85
2021/22 164 166 155 1.01
2022/23 159 139 139 0.87
2023/24 169 159 157 0.94
2024/25 160 193 156 1.21
2025/26 165 183 163 1.11
2026/27 164 180 159 1.1

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

427 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.3%

159 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

9%

14 of 164 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

911

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

867

95.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

44

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

150

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 Caldew 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 Caldew School reported 44 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.2% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Caldew School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,059 places 1,023 on roll 2012/13 1,059 places 994 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,028 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,064 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,037 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,007 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 976 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 941 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 953 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 962 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 966 on roll 2024/25 1,061 places 982 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
Cumberland

Postcode CA5 7NN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137254).

Other contested secondary schools in Cumberland

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.