School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 101 families who named Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 184 and 256 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

256 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Henry Floyd Grammar 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

Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.83 per place 264 first choices 144 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 239 first choices 172 places 2017/18 1.52 per place 267 first choices 176 places 2018/19 1.9 per place 330 first choices 174 places 2019/20 1.9 per place 332 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.91 per place 333 first choices 174 places 2021/22 3.23 per place 581 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.69 per place 311 first choices 184 places 2023/24 1.57 per place 283 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 275 first choices 182 places 2025/26 1.38 per place 253 first choices 184 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 256 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 256 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 144 264 136 1.83
2016/17 172 239 123 1.39
2017/18 176 267 149 1.52
2018/19 174 330 162 1.9
2019/20 175 332 158 1.9
2020/21 174 333 166 1.91
2021/22 180 581 177 3.23
2022/23 184 311 180 1.69
2023/24 180 283 169 1.57
2024/25 182 275 173 1.51
2025/26 184 253 153 1.38
2026/27 184 256 155 1.39

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

256

962 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.5%

155 of 256

Offers to families outside the council

26%

48 of 184 offers

How close you had to live

Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School filled its places in 2026, and 22,241m — 13.82 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

13.82 mi

22,241 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

912

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

914

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

424

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 Sir Henry Floyd Grammar 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 Sir Henry Floyd Grammar 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,065 places 1,084 on roll 2012/13 1,065 places 1,062 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,096 on roll 2014/15 1,101 places 1,103 on roll 2015/16 1,108 places 1,166 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,203 on roll 2017/18 1,293 places 1,227 on roll 2018/19 1,312 places 1,293 on roll 2020/21 1,314 places 1,308 on roll 2021/22 1,314 places 1,337 on roll 2022/23 1,314 places 1,358 on roll 2023/24 1,314 places 1,367 on roll 2024/25 1,336 places 1,347 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Buckinghamshire

Postcode HP21 8PE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136845).

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.