School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Amersham School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Amersham School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 175 and 189 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

189 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Amersham School

There is no published appeal success rate for Amersham 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 Buckinghamshire 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 Buckinghamshire, 12% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 182 of 1,519 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 Buckinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Buckinghamshire 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

Amersham School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 4 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 Amersham 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 0.83 per place 128 first choices 155 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 167 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 151 first choices 157 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 153 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 184 first choices 173 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 192 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.61 per place 126 first choices 205 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 167 first choices 166 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 208 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 185 first choices 165 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 191 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 189 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Amersham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Amersham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 155 128 104 0.83
2016/17 147 167 121 1.14
2017/18 157 151 118 0.96
2018/19 176 153 122 0.87
2019/20 173 184 137 1.06
2020/21 176 192 125 1.09
2021/22 205 126 99 0.61
2022/23 166 167 126 1.01
2023/24 169 208 134 1.23
2024/25 165 185 124 1.12
2025/26 175 191 137 1.09
2026/27 175 189 127 1.08

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

667 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.2%

127 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 175 offers

How close you had to live

Amersham School filled its places in 2026, and 4,086m — 2.54 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 — Distance, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.54 mi

4,086 metres, 2026

Under criterion

6

Distance

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Buckinghamshire Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

930

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

881

94.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

49

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

173

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 Amersham 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 Amersham School reported 49 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.7% 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 Amersham School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 855 places 817 on roll 2012/13 855 places 873 on roll 2013/14 855 places 872 on roll 2014/15 900 places 836 on roll 2015/16 900 places 819 on roll 2016/17 900 places 858 on roll 2017/18 900 places 857 on roll 2018/19 930 places 878 on roll 2020/21 960 places 944 on roll 2021/22 1,121 places 987 on roll 2022/23 1,121 places 1,024 on roll 2023/24 1,121 places 1,048 on roll 2024/25 1,103 places 1,050 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
Buckinghamshire

Postcode HP7 9HH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137343).

Other contested secondary schools in Buckinghamshire

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.