School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Eastwood Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 148 families who named The Eastwood Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 220 and 359 put it first.

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

1.63

first choices for every place available

359 first preferences for 220 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Eastwood Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Eastwood 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 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

The Eastwood Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 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 The Eastwood 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 0.97 per place 170 first choices 176 places 2016/17 1.03 per place 193 first choices 187 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 264 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.57 per place 310 first choices 197 places 2019/20 1.37 per place 296 first choices 216 places 2020/21 1.59 per place 321 first choices 202 places 2021/22 1.4 per place 297 first choices 212 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 299 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 297 first choices 226 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 247 first choices 228 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 293 first choices 226 places 2026/27 1.63 per place 359 first choices 220 places
First preferences per place at The Eastwood Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 359 first preferences for 220 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Eastwood Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 176 170 143 0.97
2016/17 187 193 159 1.03
2017/18 206 264 184 1.28
2018/19 197 310 182 1.57
2019/20 216 296 207 1.37
2020/21 202 321 192 1.59
2021/22 212 297 185 1.4
2022/23 235 299 227 1.27
2023/24 226 297 216 1.31
2024/25 228 247 201 1.08
2025/26 226 293 208 1.3
2026/27 220 359 211 1.63

Places offered

220

in 2026/27

Named first choice

359

1,020 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.8%

211 of 359

Offers to families outside the council

5%

10 of 220 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

1,210

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,134

93.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

76

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 Eastwood 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 The Eastwood Academy reported 76 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Eastwood Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 944 places 858 on roll 2012/13 944 places 832 on roll 2013/14 944 places 826 on roll 2014/15 944 places 822 on roll 2015/16 970 places 829 on roll 2016/17 970 places 874 on roll 2017/18 970 places 916 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 983 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,073 on roll 2021/22 1,040 places 1,094 on roll 2022/23 1,040 places 1,123 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,136 on roll 2024/25 1,210 places 1,134 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. The Eastwood Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Eastwood Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
30 April 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3500

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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southend-on-Sea

Postcode SS9 5UU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137284).

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.