School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Chase?

In 2026/27, The Chase offered 231 places and 216 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.94

first choices for every place available

216 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Chase

There is no published appeal success rate for The Chase, 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 Chase turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Chase, 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 0.87 per place 195 first choices 225 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 206 first choices 241 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 154 first choices 176 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 147 first choices 173 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 195 first choices 216 places 2020/21 1 per place 237 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 227 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 257 first choices 237 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 306 first choices 237 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 250 first choices 241 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 229 first choices 235 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 216 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at The Chase. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 216 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Chase, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 195 194 0.87
2016/17 241 206 206 0.85
2017/18 176 154 154 0.88
2018/19 173 147 147 0.85
2019/20 216 195 194 0.9
2020/21 238 237 234 1
2021/22 238 227 224 0.95
2022/23 237 257 234 1.08
2023/24 237 306 233 1.29
2024/25 241 250 239 1.04
2025/26 235 229 227 0.97
2026/27 231 216 216 0.94

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

216

318 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

216 of 216

Offers to families outside the council

10%

23 of 229 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

1,433

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,220

85.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

213

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Chase 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 Chase reported 213 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.1% 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 The Chase from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,679 places 1,645 on roll 2012/13 1,679 places 1,581 on roll 2013/14 1,679 places 1,551 on roll 2014/15 1,679 places 1,544 on roll 2015/16 1,679 places 1,492 on roll 2016/17 1,679 places 1,337 on roll 2017/18 1,679 places 1,267 on roll 2018/19 1,679 places 1,241 on roll 2020/21 1,679 places 1,289 on roll 2021/22 1,679 places 1,319 on roll 2022/23 1,679 places 1,370 on roll 2023/24 1,679 places 1,408 on roll 2024/25 1,783 places 1,406 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 WR14 3NZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137625).

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.