School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at E-Act Bourne End Academy?

In 2026/27, E-Act Bourne End Academy offered 146 places and 52 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.36

first choices for every place available

52 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at E-Act Bourne End Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for E-Act Bourne End Academy, 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

E-Act Bourne End Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 8 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 E-Act Bourne End Academy, 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 0.35 per place 82 first choices 232 places 2020/21 0.27 per place 54 first choices 199 places 2021/22 0.28 per place 53 first choices 190 places 2022/23 0.34 per place 79 first choices 233 places 2023/24 0.77 per place 110 first choices 142 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 141 first choices 144 places 2025/26 0.69 per place 98 first choices 143 places 2026/27 0.36 per place 52 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at E-Act Bourne End Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 52 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at E-Act Bourne End Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 232 82 82 0.35
2020/21 199 54 54 0.27
2021/22 190 53 53 0.28
2022/23 233 79 79 0.34
2023/24 142 110 110 0.77
2024/25 144 141 122 0.98
2025/26 143 98 96 0.69
2026/27 146 52 52 0.36

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

52

228 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

52 of 52

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 106 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

780

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

672

86.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

108

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

65

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 E-Act Bourne End Academy 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 E-Act Bourne End Academy reported 108 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.2% 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 E-Act Bourne End Academy from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 830 places 618 on roll 2020/21 830 places 720 on roll 2021/22 830 places 752 on roll 2022/23 860 places 814 on roll 2023/24 860 places 820 on roll 2024/25 845 places 733 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Buckinghamshire

Postcode SL8 5BW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146518).

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.