School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chase High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Chase High School as their first choice did not get a place: 113 put it first and 112 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

113 first preferences for 182 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chase High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chase High 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 Southend-on-Sea 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 Southend-on-Sea, 4.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 277 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 Southend-on-Sea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southend-on-Sea 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

Chase High School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 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 Chase High 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 0.58 per place 110 first choices 190 places 2016/17 0.55 per place 107 first choices 194 places 2017/18 0.47 per place 92 first choices 194 places 2018/19 0.52 per place 102 first choices 195 places 2019/20 0.39 per place 62 first choices 161 places 2020/21 0.39 per place 88 first choices 224 places 2021/22 0.58 per place 130 first choices 224 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 153 first choices 195 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 179 first choices 242 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 200 first choices 221 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 181 first choices 219 places 2026/27 0.62 per place 113 first choices 182 places
First preferences per place at Chase High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 113 first preferences for 182 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chase High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 190 110 110 0.58
2016/17 194 107 102 0.55
2017/18 194 92 89 0.47
2018/19 195 102 100 0.52
2019/20 161 62 62 0.39
2020/21 224 88 88 0.39
2021/22 224 130 129 0.58
2022/23 195 153 152 0.78
2023/24 242 179 179 0.74
2024/25 221 200 179 0.9
2025/26 219 181 169 0.83
2026/27 182 113 112 0.62

Places offered

182

in 2026/27

Named first choice

113

362 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.1%

112 of 113

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 150 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 131146.

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

1,382

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,128

81.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

254

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Chase High 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 Chase High School reported 254 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.6% 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 Chase High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 960 places 963 on roll 2010/11 1,035 places 1,035 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,128 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,143 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,104 on roll 2014/15 1,156 places 1,102 on roll 2015/16 1,156 places 1,118 on roll 2016/17 1,156 places 1,078 on roll 2017/18 1,156 places 1,060 on roll 2018/19 1,156 places 1,013 on roll 2020/21 1,156 places 1,116 on roll 2021/22 1,340 places 1,173 on roll 2022/23 1,340 places 1,241 on roll 2023/24 1,340 places 1,312 on roll 2024/25 1,622 places 1,308 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Chase High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Chase High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
25 January 2023 Arrangements did not comply REF3974 and REF4096

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Southend-on-Sea

Postcode SS0 0RT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141741).

Other contested secondary schools in Southend-on-Sea

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.