School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Cavendish School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 68 families who named The Cavendish School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 118 and 182 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.

1.54

first choices for every place available

182 first preferences for 118 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Cavendish School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Cavendish 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

The Cavendish 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 The Cavendish 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 0.88 per place 113 first choices 129 places 2016/17 0.8 per place 101 first choices 126 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 108 first choices 140 places 2018/19 0.91 per place 151 first choices 166 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 185 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.66 per place 199 first choices 120 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 190 first choices 148 places 2022/23 1.92 per place 229 first choices 119 places 2023/24 1.87 per place 217 first choices 116 places 2024/25 1.65 per place 193 first choices 117 places 2025/26 1.61 per place 190 first choices 118 places 2026/27 1.54 per place 182 first choices 118 places
First preferences per place at The Cavendish School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 182 first preferences for 118 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Cavendish School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 129 113 113 0.88
2016/17 126 101 101 0.8
2017/18 140 108 108 0.77
2018/19 166 151 151 0.91
2019/20 180 185 169 1.03
2020/21 120 199 119 1.66
2021/22 148 190 142 1.28
2022/23 119 229 116 1.92
2023/24 116 217 115 1.87
2024/25 117 193 115 1.65
2025/26 118 190 116 1.61
2026/27 118 182 114 1.54

Places offered

118

in 2026/27

Named first choice

182

630 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.6%

114 of 182

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 118 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

1,420

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,320

93% of capacity

Unfilled places

100

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 The Cavendish 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 The Cavendish School reported 100 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Cavendish School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,000 places 1,004 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 934 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 871 on roll 2015/16 985 places 878 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 972 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 1,042 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 1,152 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,273 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,302 on roll 2022/23 1,420 places 1,325 on roll 2023/24 1,420 places 1,323 on roll 2024/25 1,420 places 1,320 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
East Sussex

Postcode BN21 1UE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138475).

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.