School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Chantry School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named The Chantry School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 199 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Chantry School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Chantry 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 Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 90 of 458 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 Worcestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Worcestershire 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 Chantry School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Chantry 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 1.16 per place 163 first choices 141 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 172 first choices 144 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 131 first choices 138 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 175 first choices 177 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 155 first choices 157 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 215 first choices 179 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 180 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 193 first choices 175 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 207 first choices 171 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 230 first choices 171 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 193 first choices 168 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 199 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at The Chantry School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Chantry School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 163 141 1.16
2016/17 144 172 144 1.19
2017/18 138 131 131 0.95
2018/19 177 175 175 0.99
2019/20 157 155 155 0.99
2020/21 179 215 177 1.2
2021/22 179 180 176 1.01
2022/23 175 193 174 1.1
2023/24 171 207 170 1.21
2024/25 171 230 171 1.35
2025/26 168 193 167 1.15
2026/27 169 199 168 1.18

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

277 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

168 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 169 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

877

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

885

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

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 The Chantry 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 Chantry School 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Chantry School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 702 places 709 on roll 2012/13 702 places 710 on roll 2013/14 702 places 709 on roll 2014/15 702 places 717 on roll 2015/16 702 places 713 on roll 2016/17 702 places 715 on roll 2017/18 725 places 718 on roll 2018/19 875 places 745 on roll 2020/21 875 places 810 on roll 2021/22 875 places 840 on roll 2022/23 875 places 883 on roll 2023/24 875 places 873 on roll 2024/25 877 places 885 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
Worcestershire

Postcode WR6 6QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136897).

Other contested secondary schools in Worcestershire

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.