School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chetwynde School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Chetwynde School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 30 and 64 put it first.

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

2.13

first choices for every place available

64 first preferences for 30 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chetwynde School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chetwynde 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 Westmorland and Furness 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 Westmorland and Furness, 43% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 128 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 Westmorland and Furness.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Westmorland and Furness 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

Chetwynde School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Chetwynde School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.77 per place 53 first choices 30 places 2016/17 1.59 per place 46 first choices 29 places 2017/18 1 per place 41 first choices 41 places 2018/19 1 per place 46 first choices 46 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 23 first choices 29 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 43 first choices 34 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 34 first choices 29 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 45 first choices 34 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 28 first choices 30 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 43 first choices 36 places 2025/26 1.44 per place 36 first choices 25 places 2026/27 2.13 per place 64 first choices 30 places
First preferences per place at Chetwynde School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 64 first preferences for 30 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chetwynde 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 30 53 30 1.77
2016/17 29 46 29 1.59
2017/18 41 41 41 1
2018/19 46 46 46 1
2019/20 29 23 23 0.79
2020/21 34 43 31 1.26
2021/22 29 34 28 1.17
2022/23 34 45 33 1.32
2023/24 30 28 26 0.93
2024/25 36 43 32 1.19
2025/26 25 36 25 1.44
2026/27 30 64 30 2.13

Places offered

30

in 2026/27

Named first choice

64

223 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

46.9%

30 of 64

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 30 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

685

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

483

70.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

202

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 Chetwynde 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 Chetwynde School reported 202 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 70.5% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chetwynde School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 508 places 425 on roll 2015/16 508 places 469 on roll 2016/17 508 places 470 on roll 2017/18 550 places 469 on roll 2018/19 550 places 479 on roll 2020/21 550 places 500 on roll 2021/22 525 places 495 on roll 2022/23 525 places 483 on roll 2023/24 525 places 488 on roll 2024/25 685 places 483 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
Westmorland and Furness

Postcode LA13 0NY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141106).

Other contested secondary schools in Westmorland and Furness

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.