School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alec Hunter Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named Alec Hunter Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 202 and 227 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

227 first preferences for 202 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alec Hunter Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Alec Hunter Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Essex 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 Essex, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 249 of 1,651 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 Essex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Essex 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

Alec Hunter Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Alec Hunter Academy, 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 0.86 per place 146 first choices 170 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 123 first choices 136 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 128 first choices 135 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 157 first choices 166 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 180 first choices 185 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 193 first choices 200 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 229 first choices 216 places 2022/23 1 per place 209 first choices 209 places 2023/24 1.08 per place 231 first choices 213 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 239 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 270 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 227 first choices 202 places
First preferences per place at Alec Hunter Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 202 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alec Hunter Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 170 146 146 0.86
2016/17 136 123 123 0.9
2017/18 135 128 128 0.95
2018/19 166 157 157 0.95
2019/20 185 180 180 0.97
2020/21 200 193 193 0.96
2021/22 216 229 204 1.06
2022/23 209 209 199 1
2023/24 213 231 208 1.08
2024/25 206 239 202 1.16
2025/26 204 270 202 1.32
2026/27 202 227 189 1.12

Places offered

202

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

483 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.3%

189 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 202 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

1,142

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,067

93.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

75

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 Alec Hunter Academy 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 Alec Hunter Academy reported 75 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.4% 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 Alec Hunter Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,143 places 1,057 on roll 2013/14 1,143 places 980 on roll 2014/15 1,143 places 924 on roll 2015/16 1,143 places 907 on roll 2016/17 1,143 places 828 on roll 2017/18 1,143 places 767 on roll 2018/19 1,142 places 792 on roll 2020/21 1,142 places 910 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 980 on roll 2022/23 1,142 places 1,026 on roll 2023/24 1,142 places 1,049 on roll 2024/25 1,142 places 1,067 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode CM7 3NR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139402).

Other contested secondary schools in Essex

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.