School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chesterton Community Sports College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Chesterton Community Sports College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 200 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

200 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chesterton Community Sports College

There is no published appeal success rate for Chesterton Community Sports College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Staffordshire 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 Staffordshire, 20.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 157 of 752 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 Staffordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Staffordshire 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

Chesterton Community Sports College turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Chesterton Community Sports College, 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 0.96 per place 130 first choices 136 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 162 first choices 167 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 152 first choices 166 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 202 first choices 200 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 185 first choices 198 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 208 first choices 169 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 166 first choices 176 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 167 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 210 first choices 208 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 206 first choices 204 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 186 first choices 195 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 200 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Chesterton Community Sports College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 200 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chesterton Community Sports College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 136 130 130 0.96
2016/17 167 162 162 0.97
2017/18 166 152 152 0.92
2018/19 200 202 196 1.01
2019/20 198 185 185 0.93
2020/21 169 208 168 1.23
2021/22 176 166 166 0.94
2022/23 173 167 165 0.97
2023/24 208 210 202 1.01
2024/25 204 206 201 1.01
2025/26 195 186 186 0.95
2026/27 180 200 177 1.11

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

200

295 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.5%

177 of 200

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 179 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

870

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

898

103.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

28

reported as full or beyond

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 Chesterton Community Sports College 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 Chesterton Community Sports College 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chesterton Community Sports College from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 700 places 566 on roll 2014/15 700 places 586 on roll 2015/16 700 places 630 on roll 2016/17 700 places 670 on roll 2017/18 700 places 715 on roll 2018/19 700 places 791 on roll 2020/21 870 places 854 on roll 2021/22 870 places 877 on roll 2022/23 870 places 877 on roll 2023/24 870 places 883 on roll 2024/25 870 places 898 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
Staffordshire

Postcode ST5 7LP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140470).

Other contested secondary schools in Staffordshire

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.