School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Clacton County High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Clacton County High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 303 and 342 put it first.

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

1.13

first choices for every place available

342 first preferences for 303 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Clacton County High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Clacton County High 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 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

Clacton County High School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Clacton County High 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 0.99 per place 270 first choices 274 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 245 first choices 247 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 292 first choices 294 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 370 first choices 299 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 351 first choices 276 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 368 first choices 274 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 367 first choices 304 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 391 first choices 327 places 2023/24 1.34 per place 447 first choices 333 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 388 first choices 334 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 342 first choices 324 places 2026/27 1.13 per place 342 first choices 303 places
First preferences per place at Clacton County High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 342 first preferences for 303 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Clacton County High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 274 270 270 0.99
2016/17 247 245 245 0.99
2017/18 294 292 292 0.99
2018/19 299 370 297 1.24
2019/20 276 351 268 1.27
2020/21 274 368 270 1.34
2021/22 304 367 300 1.21
2022/23 327 391 323 1.2
2023/24 333 447 332 1.34
2024/25 334 388 328 1.16
2025/26 324 342 313 1.06
2026/27 303 342 299 1.13

Places offered

303

in 2026/27

Named first choice

342

471 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.4%

299 of 342

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 303 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Clacton County High School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Clacton County High School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children and previously looked after children including those who have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.2
2 Children with a sibling attending the Academy who will still be on roll at the date of admission.3
3 Children who reside within the Priority Admission Area.4
4 Children who attend the following schools: Great Clacton CofE Junior School Holland Haven Primary School Holland Park Primary School
5 Children of staff at Clacton County High School who have been employed for two or more years at the time of the application or are recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. To qualify under this criterion, the staff member must be a ‘direct employee’. This includes any member of staff (teaching or non-teaching) with two years’ continuous employment with the Academy. Staff contracted in to provide services to the Academy do not count as ‘direct employees’. […] criterion continues in the source document
6 All applications received will be considered in line with the Essex Fair Access Protocol. Please complete our application form; obtained directly from the Academy, downloading from the Academy’s website: www.countyhigh.org.uk or on request by emailing: admin@cchs.school. Alternatively, you may send a written request for the form to: Clacton County High School Walton Road Clacton on Sea Essex CO15 6DZ
7 In the event of multiple in-year applications and insufficient places, the oversubscription criteria will be applied. Following receipt of an in-year application, the Academy will notify the parents of the outcome of their application in writing within 15 school days. 5 Applying for a Year Group Outside of Chronological Age Group Where parents want their child to be educated outside of their chronological age group, an application should be made in writing to the headteacher at the same time as the application for a place. This should explain why the parents wish for their child to be educated outside of their chronological age group and enclosing any evidence that supports it. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Clacton County High School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,680

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,540

91.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

140

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

500

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 Clacton County High 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 Clacton County High School reported 140 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Clacton County High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,750 places 1,625 on roll 2012/13 1,535 places 1,579 on roll 2013/14 1,535 places 1,557 on roll 2014/15 1,535 places 1,551 on roll 2015/16 1,535 places 1,529 on roll 2016/17 1,535 places 1,545 on roll 2017/18 1,535 places 1,585 on roll 2018/19 1,535 places 1,616 on roll 2020/21 2,040 places 1,697 on roll 2021/22 2,180 places 1,737 on roll 2022/23 2,180 places 1,730 on roll 2023/24 2,180 places 1,819 on roll 2024/25 2,180 places 1,845 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
Essex

Postcode CO15 6DZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138084).

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.