School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Beaconsfield School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 71 families who named The Beaconsfield School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 148 and 186 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

186 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Beaconsfield School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Beaconsfield 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

The Beaconsfield School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 7 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 The Beaconsfield 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 1.07 per place 158 first choices 147 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 141 first choices 145 places 2017/18 0.83 per place 121 first choices 145 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 159 first choices 149 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 129 first choices 144 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 141 first choices 151 places 2021/22 0.61 per place 93 first choices 153 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 181 first choices 150 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 134 first choices 149 places 2024/25 0.73 per place 119 first choices 162 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 159 first choices 146 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 186 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at The Beaconsfield School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 186 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Beaconsfield School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 158 123 1.07
2016/17 145 141 105 0.97
2017/18 145 121 95 0.83
2018/19 149 159 115 1.07
2019/20 144 129 101 0.9
2020/21 151 141 99 0.93
2021/22 153 93 64 0.61
2022/23 150 181 116 1.21
2023/24 149 134 109 0.9
2024/25 162 119 96 0.73
2025/26 146 159 111 1.09
2026/27 148 186 115 1.26

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

186

619 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.8%

115 of 186

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 148 offers

How close you had to live

The Beaconsfield School filled its places in 2026, and 3,917m — 2.43 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 — Distance, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.43 mi

3,917 metres, 2026

Under criterion

5

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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

744

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

127

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 The Beaconsfield 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 The Beaconsfield School reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Beaconsfield School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 846 places 846 on roll 2013/14 846 places 858 on roll 2014/15 847 places 865 on roll 2015/16 847 places 845 on roll 2016/17 847 places 828 on roll 2017/18 847 places 812 on roll 2018/19 847 places 826 on roll 2020/21 890 places 856 on roll 2021/22 877 places 885 on roll 2022/23 877 places 843 on roll 2023/24 877 places 834 on roll 2024/25 877 places 863 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 HP9 1SJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139367).

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.