School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Boswells School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named The Boswells School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 241 and 247 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

247 first preferences for 241 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Boswells School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Boswells 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

The Boswells School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 1 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 The Boswells 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 0.97 per place 235 first choices 242 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 244 first choices 235 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 287 first choices 239 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 229 first choices 243 places 2019/20 0.74 per place 180 first choices 242 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 179 first choices 237 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 172 first choices 240 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 235 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 239 first choices 237 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 221 first choices 245 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 219 first choices 241 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 247 first choices 241 places
First preferences per place at The Boswells School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 241 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Boswells School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 242 235 215 0.97
2016/17 235 244 206 1.04
2017/18 239 287 215 1.2
2018/19 243 229 208 0.94
2019/20 242 180 180 0.74
2020/21 237 179 179 0.76
2021/22 240 172 172 0.72
2022/23 239 235 211 0.98
2023/24 237 239 210 1.01
2024/25 245 221 201 0.9
2025/26 241 219 200 0.91
2026/27 241 247 195 1.02

Places offered

241

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

860 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.9%

195 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 241 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

1,176

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,198

101.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

255

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 The Boswells 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 The Boswells 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 The Boswells 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 1,431 places 1,482 on roll 2012/13 1,431 places 1,480 on roll 2013/14 1,431 places 1,479 on roll 2014/15 1,431 places 1,486 on roll 2015/16 1,431 places 1,477 on roll 2016/17 1,431 places 1,465 on roll 2017/18 1,431 places 1,467 on roll 2018/19 1,431 places 1,463 on roll 2020/21 1,431 places 1,493 on roll 2021/22 1,431 places 1,502 on roll 2022/23 1,431 places 1,489 on roll 2023/24 1,431 places 1,429 on roll 2024/25 1,431 places 1,406 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 CM1 6LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137874).

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.