School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cranbourne?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 58 families who named Cranbourne as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 224 and 237 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

237 first preferences for 224 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cranbourne

There is no published appeal success rate for Cranbourne, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Hampshire 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 Hampshire, 34.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 310 of 903 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 Hampshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hampshire 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

Cranbourne turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Cranbourne, 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 0.86 per place 111 first choices 129 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 112 first choices 127 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 47 first choices 66 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 78 first choices 122 places 2019/20 0.73 per place 66 first choices 90 places 2020/21 0.54 per place 72 first choices 133 places 2021/22 0.53 per place 82 first choices 156 places 2022/23 0.64 per place 112 first choices 174 places 2023/24 0.57 per place 143 first choices 251 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 201 first choices 252 places 2025/26 0.68 per place 165 first choices 241 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 237 first choices 224 places
First preferences per place at Cranbourne. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 237 first preferences for 224 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cranbourne, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 129 111 111 0.86
2016/17 127 112 112 0.88
2017/18 66 47 47 0.71
2018/19 122 78 78 0.64
2019/20 90 66 66 0.73
2020/21 133 72 72 0.54
2021/22 156 82 82 0.53
2022/23 174 112 112 0.64
2023/24 251 143 143 0.57
2024/25 252 201 196 0.8
2025/26 241 165 165 0.68
2026/27 224 237 179 1.06

Places offered

224

in 2026/27

Named first choice

237

562 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.5%

179 of 237

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 224 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

1,182

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

992

83.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

190

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 Cranbourne 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 Cranbourne reported 190 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.9% 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 Cranbourne from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,287 places 754 on roll 2010/11 1,287 places 670 on roll 2011/12 1,287 places 659 on roll 2012/13 1,287 places 638 on roll 2013/14 1,185 places 661 on roll 2014/15 1,185 places 707 on roll 2015/16 1,195 places 682 on roll 2016/17 1,195 places 689 on roll 2017/18 1,182 places 848 on roll 2018/19 1,182 places 697 on roll 2020/21 1,182 places 541 on roll 2021/22 1,182 places 568 on roll 2022/23 1,182 places 661 on roll 2023/24 1,182 places 813 on roll 2024/25 1,182 places 992 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hampshire

Postcode RG21 3NP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116432).

Other contested secondary schools in Hampshire

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.