School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Trinity School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named The Trinity School as their first choice did not get a place: 126 put it first and 116 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Essex actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 5 years of official figures.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

126 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Trinity School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Trinity 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 Trinity School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 5 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Trinity School, 2022/23 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 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2022/23 0.73 per place 87 first choices 119 places 2023/24 0.65 per place 116 first choices 178 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 160 first choices 179 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 153 first choices 176 places 2026/27 0.71 per place 126 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at The Trinity School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 126 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Trinity School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2022/23 119 87 75 0.73
2023/24 178 116 111 0.65
2024/25 179 160 139 0.89
2025/26 176 153 140 0.87
2026/27 177 126 116 0.71

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

126

682 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.1%

116 of 126

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 177 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

595

66.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

305

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Trinity 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 Trinity School reported 305 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 66.1% 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, 2021/22 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Trinity School from 2021/22 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2021/22 1,320 places 121 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 239 on roll 2023/24 900 places 420 on roll 2024/25 900 places 595 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode CO4 6ED. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143701).

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.