School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chailey School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 60 families who named Chailey School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 219 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

219 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chailey School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chailey 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 East Sussex 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 East Sussex, 24.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 632 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 East Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not East Sussex 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

Chailey School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Chailey 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 0.92 per place 114 first choices 124 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 153 first choices 163 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 127 first choices 145 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 160 first choices 158 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 151 first choices 157 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 201 first choices 159 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 194 first choices 170 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 191 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 176 first choices 171 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 220 first choices 171 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 192 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 219 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at Chailey School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chailey School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 124 114 114 0.92
2016/17 163 153 152 0.94
2017/18 145 127 127 0.88
2018/19 158 160 153 1.01
2019/20 157 151 143 0.96
2020/21 159 201 155 1.26
2021/22 170 194 165 1.14
2022/23 173 191 167 1.1
2023/24 171 176 160 1.03
2024/25 171 220 167 1.29
2025/26 178 192 154 1.08
2026/27 174 219 159 1.26

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

552 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.6%

159 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

15%

26 of 174 offers

How close you had to live

Chailey School filled its places in 2025, and 7,721m — 4.80 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

4.80 mi

7,721 metres, 2025

Under criterion

6

as numbered by the school

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

East Sussex Council, allocation statistics for 2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

870

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

859

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Chailey 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 Chailey School reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chailey School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 810 places 830 on roll 2010/11 810 places 785 on roll 2011/12 810 places 732 on roll 2012/13 810 places 731 on roll 2013/14 810 places 697 on roll 2014/15 810 places 706 on roll 2015/16 810 places 684 on roll 2016/17 810 places 730 on roll 2017/18 810 places 724 on roll 2018/19 810 places 753 on roll 2020/21 810 places 785 on roll 2021/22 810 places 798 on roll 2022/23 870 places 828 on roll 2023/24 870 places 835 on roll 2024/25 870 places 859 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
East Sussex

Postcode BN8 4PU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114594).

Other contested secondary schools in East Sussex

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.