School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saffron Walden County High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named Saffron Walden County High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 290 and 344 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

344 first preferences for 290 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saffron Walden County High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Saffron Walden 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

Saffron Walden County High School 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 Saffron Walden 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 1.3 per place 380 first choices 293 places 2016/17 1.29 per place 363 first choices 282 places 2017/18 1.3 per place 363 first choices 279 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 324 first choices 291 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 303 first choices 291 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 327 first choices 293 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 353 first choices 295 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 319 first choices 294 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 361 first choices 296 places 2024/25 1.34 per place 380 first choices 284 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 367 first choices 298 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 344 first choices 290 places
First preferences per place at Saffron Walden County High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 344 first preferences for 290 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saffron Walden 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
2015/16 293 380 289 1.3
2016/17 282 363 280 1.29
2017/18 279 363 278 1.3
2018/19 291 324 290 1.11
2019/20 291 303 286 1.04
2020/21 293 327 293 1.12
2021/22 295 353 292 1.2
2022/23 294 319 293 1.09
2023/24 296 361 292 1.22
2024/25 284 380 284 1.34
2025/26 298 367 296 1.23
2026/27 290 344 289 1.19

Places offered

290

in 2026/27

Named first choice

344

536 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84%

289 of 344

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 of 290 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,510

100.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

636

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 Saffron Walden 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 Saffron Walden County 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 Saffron Walden 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 1,882 places 2,025 on roll 2012/13 1,882 places 2,034 on roll 2013/14 1,972 places 2,059 on roll 2014/15 1,972 places 2,004 on roll 2015/16 1,972 places 2,018 on roll 2016/17 1,972 places 2,076 on roll 2017/18 1,972 places 2,078 on roll 2018/19 2,050 places 2,098 on roll 2020/21 2,050 places 2,136 on roll 2021/22 2,050 places 2,160 on roll 2022/23 2,050 places 2,134 on roll 2023/24 2,050 places 2,124 on roll 2024/25 2,136 places 2,126 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 CB11 4UH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136776).

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.