School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Clere's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 71 families who named St Clere's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 288 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

288 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Clere's School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Clere's 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 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

St Clere's School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 St Clere's 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 1.24 per place 283 first choices 229 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 255 first choices 228 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 318 first choices 221 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 368 first choices 370 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 374 first choices 257 places 2020/21 1.51 per place 392 first choices 260 places 2021/22 1.41 per place 333 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 308 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 304 first choices 238 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 256 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 242 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 288 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at St Clere's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 288 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Clere's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 229 283 212 1.24
2016/17 228 255 211 1.12
2017/18 221 318 206 1.44
2018/19 370 368 335 0.99
2019/20 257 374 243 1.46
2020/21 260 392 245 1.51
2021/22 237 333 230 1.41
2022/23 239 308 225 1.29
2023/24 238 304 228 1.28
2024/25 238 256 223 1.08
2025/26 236 242 216 1.03
2026/27 236 288 217 1.22

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

288

640 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.3%

217 of 288

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 236 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

1,251

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,215

97.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

36

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 St Clere's 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 St Clere's School reported 36 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.1% 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 St Clere's School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,005 places 1,009 on roll 2012/13 1,005 places 1,009 on roll 2013/14 1,005 places 1,016 on roll 2014/15 1,005 places 1,041 on roll 2015/16 1,065 places 1,069 on roll 2016/17 1,155 places 1,105 on roll 2017/18 1,155 places 1,127 on roll 2018/19 1,304 places 1,302 on roll 2020/21 1,344 places 1,339 on roll 2021/22 1,383 places 1,352 on roll 2022/23 1,383 places 1,344 on roll 2023/24 1,551 places 1,330 on roll 2024/25 1,551 places 1,434 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
Thurrock

Postcode SS17 0NW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137456).

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.