School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Churchdown School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 65 families who named Churchdown School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 238 and 292 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

292 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Churchdown School

There is no published appeal success rate for Churchdown 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 Gloucestershire 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 Gloucestershire, 26.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 424 of 1,598 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 Gloucestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Gloucestershire 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

Churchdown School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 Churchdown 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 0.8 per place 182 first choices 228 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 211 first choices 227 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 286 first choices 226 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 281 first choices 227 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 312 first choices 261 places 2020/21 1.43 per place 372 first choices 260 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 274 first choices 224 places 2022/23 1.38 per place 341 first choices 247 places 2023/24 1.75 per place 419 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 345 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.6 per place 383 first choices 240 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 292 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at Churchdown School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 292 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Churchdown School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 228 182 180 0.8
2016/17 227 211 177 0.93
2017/18 226 286 204 1.27
2018/19 227 281 211 1.24
2019/20 261 312 232 1.2
2020/21 260 372 249 1.43
2021/22 224 274 188 1.22
2022/23 247 341 241 1.38
2023/24 240 419 229 1.75
2024/25 240 345 223 1.44
2025/26 240 383 230 1.6
2026/27 238 292 227 1.23

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

292

916 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

227 of 292

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 238 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

1,175

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,252

106.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

77

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

230

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 Churchdown 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 Churchdown 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 Churchdown School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,332 places 1,293 on roll 2012/13 1,332 places 1,278 on roll 2013/14 1,332 places 1,285 on roll 2014/15 1,332 places 1,265 on roll 2015/16 1,332 places 1,248 on roll 2016/17 1,332 places 1,282 on roll 2017/18 1,332 places 1,318 on roll 2018/19 1,332 places 1,351 on roll 2020/21 1,380 places 1,450 on roll 2021/22 1,405 places 1,459 on roll 2022/23 1,405 places 1,441 on roll 2023/24 1,405 places 1,470 on roll 2024/25 1,405 places 1,441 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
Gloucestershire

Postcode GL3 2RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137634).

Other contested secondary schools in Gloucestershire

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.