School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy?

In 2026/27, Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy offered 202 places and 175 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.87

first choices for every place available

175 first preferences for 202 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Isle of Wight 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 Isle of Wight, 28.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 39 of 139 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 Isle of Wight.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Isle of Wight 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

Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy, 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 0.94 per place 155 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1 per place 185 first choices 185 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 191 first choices 195 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 170 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 238 first choices 255 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 199 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 262 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1 per place 203 first choices 202 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 236 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 202 first choices 199 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 197 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.87 per place 175 first choices 202 places
First preferences per place at Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 202 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 165 155 155 0.94
2016/17 185 185 185 1
2017/18 195 191 191 0.98
2018/19 178 170 170 0.96
2019/20 255 238 238 0.93
2020/21 207 199 187 0.96
2021/22 206 262 199 1.27
2022/23 202 203 189 1
2023/24 233 236 224 1.01
2024/25 199 202 187 1.02
2025/26 205 197 195 0.96
2026/27 202 175 175 0.87

Places offered

202

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

265 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

175 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 200 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

1,437

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,003

69.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

434

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

148

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 Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy 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 Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy reported 434 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 69.8% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cowes Enterprise College, An Ormiston Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,585 places 987 on roll 2015/16 1,585 places 1,006 on roll 2016/17 1,585 places 999 on roll 2017/18 1,585 places 1,053 on roll 2018/19 1,585 places 1,084 on roll 2020/21 1,585 places 1,211 on roll 2021/22 1,585 places 1,219 on roll 2022/23 1,585 places 1,226 on roll 2023/24 1,482 places 1,225 on roll 2024/25 1,585 places 1,183 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Isle of Wight

Postcode PO31 8HB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140845).

Other contested secondary schools in Isle of Wight

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.