School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Great Baddow High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 58 families who named Great Baddow High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 245 and 267 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

267 first preferences for 245 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Great Baddow High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Great Baddow 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

Great Baddow High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Great Baddow 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 1.02 per place 234 first choices 230 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 230 first choices 245 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 231 first choices 263 places 2018/19 0.91 per place 224 first choices 245 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 220 first choices 238 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 250 first choices 247 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 233 first choices 248 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 246 first choices 248 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 240 first choices 243 places 2024/25 1.46 per place 361 first choices 247 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 297 first choices 240 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 267 first choices 245 places
First preferences per place at Great Baddow High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 267 first preferences for 245 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Great Baddow 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
2015/16 230 234 207 1.02
2016/17 245 230 213 0.94
2017/18 263 231 214 0.88
2018/19 245 224 206 0.91
2019/20 238 220 197 0.92
2020/21 247 250 217 1.01
2021/22 248 233 214 0.94
2022/23 248 246 214 0.99
2023/24 243 240 210 0.99
2024/25 247 361 227 1.46
2025/26 240 297 215 1.24
2026/27 245 267 209 1.09

Places offered

245

in 2026/27

Named first choice

267

1,119 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.3%

209 of 267

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 245 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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,266

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

16

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

297

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 Great Baddow 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 Great Baddow High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Great Baddow High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,413 places 1,387 on roll 2012/13 1,413 places 1,373 on roll 2013/14 1,413 places 1,367 on roll 2014/15 1,413 places 1,381 on roll 2015/16 1,413 places 1,364 on roll 2016/17 1,413 places 1,400 on roll 2017/18 1,435 places 1,416 on roll 2018/19 1,413 places 1,449 on roll 2020/21 1,413 places 1,476 on roll 2021/22 1,413 places 1,503 on roll 2022/23 1,520 places 1,535 on roll 2023/24 1,520 places 1,520 on roll 2024/25 1,547 places 1,526 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 CM2 9RZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136904).

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.