School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The King John School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 151 families who named The King John School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 346 and 481 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

481 first preferences for 346 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The King John School

There is no published appeal success rate for The King John 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 King John School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 King John 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 1.03 per place 353 first choices 344 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 327 first choices 345 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 395 first choices 342 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 444 first choices 347 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 370 first choices 349 places 2020/21 0.82 per place 267 first choices 327 places 2021/22 0.73 per place 204 first choices 280 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 278 first choices 304 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 299 first choices 349 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 374 first choices 349 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 399 first choices 346 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 481 first choices 346 places
First preferences per place at The King John School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 481 first preferences for 346 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The King John School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 344 353 322 1.03
2016/17 345 327 300 0.95
2017/18 342 395 311 1.15
2018/19 347 444 320 1.28
2019/20 349 370 298 1.06
2020/21 327 267 267 0.82
2021/22 280 204 203 0.73
2022/23 304 278 278 0.91
2023/24 349 299 294 0.86
2024/25 349 374 330 1.07
2025/26 346 399 319 1.15
2026/27 346 481 330 1.39

Places offered

346

in 2026/27

Named first choice

481

1,097 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.6%

330 of 481

Offers to families outside the council

14%

48 of 346 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

1,750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,648

94.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

102

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

450

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 King John 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 King John School reported 102 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The King John School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,853 places 1,878 on roll 2011/12 2,000 places 1,892 on roll 2012/13 2,000 places 1,901 on roll 2013/14 2,000 places 1,943 on roll 2014/15 2,000 places 1,989 on roll 2015/16 2,000 places 2,033 on roll 2016/17 2,000 places 2,078 on roll 2017/18 2,000 places 2,080 on roll 2018/19 2,200 places 2,132 on roll 2020/21 2,200 places 2,119 on roll 2021/22 2,200 places 2,051 on roll 2022/23 2,200 places 2,048 on roll 2023/24 2,200 places 2,085 on roll 2024/25 2,200 places 2,103 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The King John School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The King John School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 July 2020 Arrangements did not comply REF3742

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 SS7 1RQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136577).

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.