School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Sandon School?

In 2026/27, The Sandon School offered 213 places and 164 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.

0.77

first choices for every place available

164 first preferences for 213 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Sandon School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Sandon 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 Sandon 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 Sandon 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 per place 212 first choices 212 places 2016/17 1.05 per place 225 first choices 214 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 213 first choices 211 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 235 first choices 212 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 235 first choices 211 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 158 first choices 198 places 2021/22 0.81 per place 173 first choices 213 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 188 first choices 216 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 202 first choices 212 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 179 first choices 212 places 2025/26 0.75 per place 158 first choices 211 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 164 first choices 213 places
First preferences per place at The Sandon School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 164 first preferences for 213 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Sandon School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 212 212 194 1
2016/17 214 225 190 1.05
2017/18 211 213 184 1.01
2018/19 212 235 193 1.11
2019/20 211 235 193 1.11
2020/21 198 158 158 0.8
2021/22 213 173 173 0.81
2022/23 216 188 170 0.87
2023/24 212 202 182 0.95
2024/25 212 179 160 0.84
2025/26 211 158 158 0.75
2026/27 213 164 164 0.77

Places offered

213

in 2026/27

Named first choice

164

708 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

164 of 164

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 212 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,059

98.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

287

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 Sandon 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 Sandon School reported 21 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Sandon School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,253 places 1,235 on roll 2012/13 1,253 places 1,238 on roll 2013/14 1,253 places 1,251 on roll 2014/15 1,253 places 1,254 on roll 2015/16 1,253 places 1,252 on roll 2016/17 1,253 places 1,269 on roll 2017/18 1,253 places 1,250 on roll 2018/19 1,253 places 1,236 on roll 2020/21 1,253 places 1,269 on roll 2021/22 1,253 places 1,285 on roll 2022/23 1,253 places 1,282 on roll 2023/24 1,253 places 1,275 on roll 2024/25 1,367 places 1,228 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 CM2 7AQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137240).

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.