School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Orsett Heath Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 57 families who named Orsett Heath Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 235 and 256 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Thurrock actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 5 years of official figures.

1.09

first choices for every place available

256 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Orsett Heath Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Orsett Heath 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 Thurrock 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 Thurrock, 10.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 274 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 Thurrock.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Thurrock 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

Orsett Heath Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 5 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Orsett Heath Academy, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 1.12 per place 133 first choices 119 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 131 first choices 118 places 2024/25 0.69 per place 135 first choices 196 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 221 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 256 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Orsett Heath Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 256 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Orsett Heath Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 119 133 108 1.12
2022/23 118 131 111 1.11
2024/25 196 135 135 0.69
2025/26 237 221 190 0.93
2026/27 235 256 199 1.09

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

256

866 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

199 of 256

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 235 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

568

47.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

632

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 Orsett Heath 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 Orsett Heath Academy reported 632 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 47.3% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Orsett Heath Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 1,200 places 120 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 237 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 347 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 344 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 568 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
Thurrock

Postcode RM16 4DG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147847).

Other contested secondary schools in Thurrock

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.