School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 113 families who named Sir William Borlase's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 257 put it first.

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

1.76

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir William Borlase's 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 William Borlase's 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 William Borlase's Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.25 per place 150 first choices 120 places 2016/17 1.88 per place 225 first choices 120 places 2017/18 1.85 per place 222 first choices 120 places 2018/19 1.82 per place 218 first choices 120 places 2019/20 2.13 per place 258 first choices 121 places 2020/21 1.65 per place 246 first choices 149 places 2021/22 2.58 per place 384 first choices 149 places 2022/23 1.6 per place 240 first choices 150 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 213 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1.5 per place 220 first choices 147 places 2025/26 1.5 per place 220 first choices 147 places 2026/27 1.76 per place 257 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir William Borlase's 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
2015/16 120 150 116 1.25
2016/17 120 225 119 1.88
2017/18 120 222 118 1.85
2018/19 120 218 116 1.82
2019/20 121 258 120 2.13
2020/21 149 246 143 1.65
2021/22 149 384 148 2.58
2022/23 150 240 150 1.6
2023/24 150 213 146 1.42
2024/25 147 220 144 1.5
2025/26 147 220 145 1.5
2026/27 146 257 144 1.76

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

714 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56%

144 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

27%

40 of 146 offers

How close you had to live

Sir William Borlase's Grammar School filled its places in 2026, and 5,023m — 3.12 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 — Catchment, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.12 mi

5,023 metres, 2026

Under criterion

6

Catchment

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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

752

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

361

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 William Borlase's 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 William Borlase's 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 William Borlase's Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,013 places 1,051 on roll 2012/13 1,013 places 1,027 on roll 2013/14 1,013 places 1,030 on roll 2014/15 1,013 places 1,051 on roll 2015/16 1,013 places 1,064 on roll 2016/17 1,013 places 1,073 on roll 2017/18 1,056 places 1,076 on roll 2018/19 1,086 places 1,067 on roll 2020/21 1,086 places 1,153 on roll 2021/22 1,086 places 1,164 on roll 2022/23 1,111 places 1,163 on roll 2023/24 1,111 places 1,189 on roll 2024/25 1,111 places 1,204 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Sir William Borlase's Grammar School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sir William Borlase's Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 July 2019 No fault found case reference number ADA3590-92
29 August 2017 No fault found ADA3294

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 SL7 2BR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136781).

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.