School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hedingham School and Sixth Form?

In 2026/27, Hedingham School and Sixth Form offered 189 places and 177 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.94

first choices for every place available

177 first preferences for 189 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hedingham School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Hedingham School and Sixth Form, 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

Hedingham School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Hedingham School and Sixth Form, 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 148 first choices 173 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 171 first choices 181 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 171 first choices 178 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 194 first choices 191 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 190 first choices 191 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 177 first choices 184 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 201 first choices 195 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 211 first choices 194 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 188 first choices 193 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 224 first choices 196 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 190 first choices 206 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 177 first choices 189 places
First preferences per place at Hedingham School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 189 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hedingham School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 173 148 148 0.86
2016/17 181 171 165 0.94
2017/18 178 171 171 0.96
2018/19 191 194 177 1.02
2019/20 191 190 181 0.99
2020/21 184 177 177 0.96
2021/22 195 201 178 1.03
2022/23 194 211 188 1.09
2023/24 193 188 178 0.97
2024/25 196 224 190 1.14
2025/26 206 190 183 0.92
2026/27 189 177 177 0.94

Places offered

189

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

300 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

177 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

3%

5 of 189 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

980

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

984

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

4

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

306

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 Hedingham School and Sixth Form 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 Hedingham School and Sixth Form 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hedingham School and Sixth Form from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,168 places 1,090 on roll 2013/14 1,168 places 1,077 on roll 2014/15 1,168 places 1,098 on roll 2015/16 1,168 places 1,091 on roll 2016/17 1,168 places 1,110 on roll 2017/18 1,168 places 1,089 on roll 2018/19 1,168 places 1,118 on roll 2020/21 1,168 places 1,145 on roll 2021/22 1,168 places 1,145 on roll 2022/23 1,168 places 1,129 on roll 2023/24 1,168 places 1,132 on roll 2024/25 1,286 places 1,158 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 CO9 3QH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139153).

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.