School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The FitzWimarc School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named The FitzWimarc School as their first choice did not get a place: 284 put it first and 266 of them were offered one.

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

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

284 first preferences for 292 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The FitzWimarc School

There is no published appeal success rate for The FitzWimarc 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 FitzWimarc School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 The FitzWimarc 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 0.89 per place 236 first choices 264 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 244 first choices 261 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 271 first choices 264 places 2018/19 0.91 per place 268 first choices 293 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 263 first choices 298 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 229 first choices 281 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 201 first choices 280 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 261 first choices 277 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 264 first choices 280 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 341 first choices 297 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 330 first choices 295 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 284 first choices 292 places
First preferences per place at The FitzWimarc School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 284 first preferences for 292 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The FitzWimarc School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 264 236 235 0.89
2016/17 261 244 242 0.93
2017/18 264 271 252 1.03
2018/19 293 268 258 0.91
2019/20 298 263 261 0.88
2020/21 281 229 227 0.81
2021/22 280 201 201 0.72
2022/23 277 261 261 0.94
2023/24 280 264 264 0.94
2024/25 297 341 289 1.15
2025/26 295 330 284 1.12
2026/27 292 284 266 0.97

Places offered

292

in 2026/27

Named first choice

284

1,055 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.7%

266 of 284

Offers to families outside the council

8%

22 of 292 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 115338.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The FitzWimarc School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for The FitzWimarc School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children (see note a), as defined in Section 22 of the Children Act 1989;
2 Where a child lives within the existing priority admissions area (see map available from our school office);
3 When, though living outside the priority admissions area, the child has a sibling already attending FitzWimarc (see note b);
4 Where the child lives outside the priority admissions area but attends one of the partner primary schools (Edward Francis Primary, Grove Wood Primary, Rayleigh Primary, Wyburns Primary)
5 Children of members of staff:
a) where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made; and/or
b) the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
6 Where a child lives outside the priority admissions area and does not satisfy the requirements of criteria 1 to 5 above but who demonstrate an aptitude in:
a) PE. Up to 5% of the published admissions limit who demonstrate an aptitude for PE may be allocated according to the aptitude assessment results. The PE aptitude assessment will take place at The FitzWimarc School. Places will be allocated in rank order of aptitude scored in the assessment; or
b) Art or music. Up to 5% of the published admissions limit who demonstrate an aptitude for art or music may be allocated according to the aptitude assessment results. The art and music aptitude assessments will take place at The FitzWimarc School. Places will be allocated in rank order of aptitude scored in the assessments. Parents wishing their child to take one (or more) of the aptitude tests are required to complete the relevant Supplementary Information Form(s) (SIF). These can be obtained from the school or completed on the school website and must be returned to the school. Where two students are of equal ability, the one living nearer to the school would gain preference. […] criterion continues in the source document
7 Where the child’s home is close to the FitzWimarc School, with those living nearer being accorded the higher priority (see note c).

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

The FitzWimarc School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,472

98.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

28

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 FitzWimarc 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 FitzWimarc School reported 28 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The FitzWimarc School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,349 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,349 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,353 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,353 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,347 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,349 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,347 on roll 2016/17 1,670 places 1,448 on roll 2017/18 1,670 places 1,516 on roll 2018/19 1,670 places 1,580 on roll 2020/21 1,820 places 1,694 on roll 2021/22 1,820 places 1,702 on roll 2022/23 1,820 places 1,764 on roll 2023/24 1,820 places 1,765 on roll 2024/25 1,820 places 1,787 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 SS6 8EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141841).

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.