School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Stour Valley Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Stour Valley Community School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 112 and 116 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

116 first preferences for 112 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Stour Valley Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Stour Valley Community 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 Suffolk 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 Suffolk, 26.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 112 of 426 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 Suffolk.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Suffolk 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

Stour Valley Community School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Stour Valley Community 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 0.85 per place 97 first choices 114 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 117 first choices 113 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 116 first choices 115 places 2018/19 1.32 per place 152 first choices 115 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 137 first choices 115 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 132 first choices 115 places 2021/22 1.23 per place 142 first choices 115 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 125 first choices 116 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 139 first choices 115 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 99 first choices 109 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 130 first choices 114 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 116 first choices 112 places
First preferences per place at Stour Valley Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 116 first preferences for 112 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Stour Valley Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 114 97 94 0.85
2016/17 113 117 101 1.04
2017/18 115 116 110 1.01
2018/19 115 152 111 1.32
2019/20 115 137 108 1.19
2020/21 115 132 110 1.15
2021/22 115 142 113 1.23
2022/23 116 125 111 1.08
2023/24 115 139 111 1.21
2024/25 109 99 98 0.91
2025/26 114 130 109 1.14
2026/27 112 116 108 1.04

Places offered

112

in 2026/27

Named first choice

116

183 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.1%

108 of 116

Offers to families outside the council

7%

8 of 112 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

575

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

567

98.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

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 Stour Valley Community 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 Stour Valley Community School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Stour Valley Community School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 540 places 202 on roll 2012/13 540 places 338 on roll 2013/14 540 places 459 on roll 2014/15 540 places 538 on roll 2015/16 540 places 547 on roll 2016/17 540 places 575 on roll 2017/18 540 places 575 on roll 2018/19 540 places 572 on roll 2020/21 540 places 582 on roll 2021/22 540 places 579 on roll 2022/23 540 places 583 on roll 2023/24 540 places 578 on roll 2024/25 575 places 567 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode CO10 8PJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136757).

Other contested secondary schools in Suffolk

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.