School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Princes Risborough School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 26 families who named Princes Risborough School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 180 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

180 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Princes Risborough School

There is no published appeal success rate for Princes Risborough 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

Princes Risborough School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 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 Princes Risborough School, 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 0.42 per place 87 first choices 206 places 2020/21 0.55 per place 103 first choices 188 places 2021/22 0.37 per place 77 first choices 207 places 2022/23 0.54 per place 123 first choices 226 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 168 first choices 200 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 194 first choices 179 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 161 first choices 167 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 180 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Princes Risborough School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Princes Risborough School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 206 87 87 0.42
2020/21 188 103 103 0.55
2021/22 207 77 77 0.37
2022/23 226 123 123 0.54
2023/24 200 168 161 0.84
2024/25 179 194 147 1.08
2025/26 167 161 144 0.96
2026/27 178 180 154 1.01

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

447 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

154 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 178 offers

How close you had to live

Every applicant was offered a place at Princes Risborough School in 2026. That is the most recent round Buckinghamshire has published, and it means there was no cut-off that year — nobody was turned away for living too far, so no distance exists to be measured against.

Last place offered at

No cut-off

everyone who applied was offered, 2026

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because of how far from the school you live, and cannot allow it because you live close by. No cut-off applied here in any round Buckinghamshire has published — the school offered a place to everyone who asked for one. 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.

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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

919

95.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

41

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

176

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 Princes Risborough 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 Princes Risborough School reported 41 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.7% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Princes Risborough School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,030 places 886 on roll 2020/21 1,030 places 899 on roll 2021/22 1,030 places 928 on roll 2022/23 1,060 places 1,028 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,104 on roll 2024/25 1,136 places 1,101 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 HP27 0DR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146377).

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.