School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Colchester County High School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 157 families who named Colchester County High School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 190 and 322 put it first.

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

1.69

first choices for every place available

322 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Colchester County High School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Colchester County High School for Girls, 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

Colchester County High School for Girls turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Colchester County High School for Girls, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.68 per place 249 first choices 148 places 2016/17 1.85 per place 294 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.58 per place 250 first choices 158 places 2018/19 1.55 per place 247 first choices 159 places 2019/20 1.93 per place 308 first choices 160 places 2020/21 1.55 per place 296 first choices 191 places 2021/22 2.01 per place 381 first choices 190 places 2022/23 1.45 per place 276 first choices 191 places 2023/24 1.53 per place 291 first choices 190 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 290 first choices 192 places 2025/26 1.66 per place 318 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1.69 per place 322 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at Colchester County High School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 322 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Colchester County High School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 148 249 129 1.68
2016/17 159 294 141 1.85
2017/18 158 250 130 1.58
2018/19 159 247 128 1.55
2019/20 160 308 122 1.93
2020/21 191 296 148 1.55
2021/22 190 381 150 2.01
2022/23 191 276 157 1.45
2023/24 190 291 140 1.53
2024/25 192 290 149 1.51
2025/26 192 318 154 1.66
2026/27 190 322 165 1.69

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

322

744 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

51.2%

165 of 322

Offers to families outside the council

32%

60 of 190 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

959

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Colchester County High School for Girls 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 Colchester County High School for Girls reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Colchester County High School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 797 places 795 on roll 2012/13 797 places 794 on roll 2013/14 797 places 781 on roll 2014/15 797 places 808 on roll 2015/16 797 places 872 on roll 2016/17 797 places 920 on roll 2017/18 1,040 places 932 on roll 2018/19 1,040 places 981 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,099 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,124 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,148 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,182 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,207 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Colchester County High School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Colchester County High School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 March 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3281

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode CO3 3US. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137515).

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.