School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Christ's College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Christ's College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 89 and 115 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

115 first preferences for 89 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Christ's College

There is no published appeal success rate for Christ's 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 Sunderland 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 Sunderland, 77.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 189 of 244 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 Sunderland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sunderland 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

Christ's College turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Christ's 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 ratio not published 16 first choices 0 places 2016/17 ratio not published 5 first choices 0 places 2017/18 ratio not published 14 first choices 0 places 2018/19 ratio not published 11 first choices 15 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 23 first choices 18 places 2020/21 ratio not published 14 first choices 15 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 72 first choices 81 places 2022/23 1 per place 68 first choices 68 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 60 first choices 67 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 67 first choices 68 places 2025/26 1 per place 87 first choices 87 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 115 first choices 89 places
First preferences per place at Christ's College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 115 first preferences for 89 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Christ's 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 0 16 0 too small to publish
2016/17 0 5 0 too small to publish
2017/18 0 14 0 too small to publish
2018/19 15 11 11 too small to publish
2019/20 18 23 15 1.28
2020/21 15 14 14 too small to publish
2021/22 81 72 72 0.89
2022/23 68 68 68 1
2023/24 67 60 60 0.9
2024/25 68 67 67 0.99
2025/26 87 87 81 1
2026/27 89 115 86 1.29

Places offered

89

in 2026/27

Named first choice

115

172 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.8%

86 of 115

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 89 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

783

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

792

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

9

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 Christ's 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 Christ's 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Christ's College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 480 places 508 on roll 2013/14 560 places 545 on roll 2014/15 560 places 583 on roll 2015/16 560 places 559 on roll 2016/17 682 places 537 on roll 2017/18 762 places 571 on roll 2018/19 792 places 541 on roll 2020/21 792 places 572 on roll 2021/22 792 places 656 on roll 2022/23 792 places 718 on roll 2023/24 792 places 769 on roll 2024/25 783 places 792 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
Sunderland

Postcode SR4 8PG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138567).

Other contested secondary schools in Sunderland

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.