School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Commonweal School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named The Commonweal School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 235 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

235 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Commonweal School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Commonweal 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 Swindon 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 Swindon, 15.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 163 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 Swindon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Swindon 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 Commonweal School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 The Commonweal 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 0.97 per place 203 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 254 first choices 229 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 226 first choices 224 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 279 first choices 209 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 179 first choices 202 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 170 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 188 first choices 212 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 159 first choices 194 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 258 first choices 220 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 289 first choices 222 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 277 first choices 229 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 235 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at The Commonweal School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 235 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Commonweal School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 203 203 0.97
2016/17 229 254 226 1.11
2017/18 224 226 216 1.01
2018/19 209 279 207 1.33
2019/20 202 179 179 0.89
2020/21 180 170 170 0.94
2021/22 212 188 186 0.89
2022/23 194 159 159 0.82
2023/24 220 258 211 1.17
2024/25 222 289 219 1.3
2025/26 229 277 215 1.21
2026/27 232 235 218 1.01

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

235

572 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.8%

218 of 235

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 232 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

1,100

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,088

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Commonweal 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 The Commonweal School reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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 Commonweal School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,100 places 1,092 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,112 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,121 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,212 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,269 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,374 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,420 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,382 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,385 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,419 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,381 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,392 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,379 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
Swindon

Postcode SN1 4JE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137190).

Other contested secondary schools in Swindon

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.