Refused a place at Bedford Free School?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 60 families who named Bedford Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 109 and 168 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Bedford actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
168 first preferences for 109 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Bedford Free School
There is no published appeal success rate for Bedford Free 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 Bedford 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 Bedford, 29.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 91 of 305 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 Bedford.
What a panel here can act on
These are national rules, not Bedford ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Bedford Free School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 | 129 | 127 | 127 | 0.98 |
| 2018/19 | 119 | 117 | 115 | 0.98 |
| 2019/20 | 120 | 189 | 110 | 1.57 |
| 2020/21 | 98 | 182 | 92 | 1.86 |
| 2021/22 | 93 | 210 | 90 | 2.26 |
| 2022/23 | 111 | 223 | 107 | 2.01 |
| 2023/24 | 96 | 209 | 95 | 2.18 |
| 2024/25 | 99 | 189 | 96 | 1.91 |
| 2025/26 | 108 | 190 | 98 | 1.76 |
| 2026/27 | 109 | 168 | 108 | 1.54 |
Places offered
109
in 2026/27
Named first choice
168
434 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
64.3%
108 of 168
Offers to families outside the council
0%
0 of 109 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
500
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
532
106.4% of capacity
Over its capacity by
32
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 Bedford Free 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 Bedford Free 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Bedford does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Free schools
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Bedford
Postcode MK42 9AD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138228).
Other contested secondary schools in Bedford
- Goldington Academy 1.49 first choices per place
- Biddenham International School and Sports College 1.06 first choices per place
- Castle Newnham School 0.72 first choices per place
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.