School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bullers Wood School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Bullers Wood School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: 131 put it first and 117 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Bromley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

131 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bullers Wood School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for Bullers Wood School for Boys, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Bullers Wood School for Boys turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 5 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Bullers Wood School for Boys, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.73 per place 129 first choices 177 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 175 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 180 first choices 190 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 211 first choices 174 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 226 first choices 172 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 180 first choices 172 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 152 first choices 165 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 131 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Bullers Wood School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 131 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bullers Wood School for Boys, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 177 129 114 0.73
2020/21 176 175 135 0.99
2021/22 190 180 137 0.95
2022/23 174 211 133 1.21
2023/24 172 226 137 1.31
2024/25 172 180 132 1.05
2025/26 165 152 112 0.92
2026/27 175 131 117 0.75

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

131

646 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.3%

117 of 131

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 175 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

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 Bullers Wood School for Boys 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 Bullers Wood School for Boys reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bullers Wood School for Boys from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 900 places 179 on roll 2020/21 900 places 539 on roll 2021/22 900 places 718 on roll 2022/23 900 places 898 on roll 2023/24 900 places 902 on roll 2024/25 900 places 894 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
Bromley

Postcode BR1 2NW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145868).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.