School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Prince William School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Prince William School as their first choice did not get a place: 227 put it first and 224 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in North Northamptonshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

227 first preferences for 241 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Prince William School

There is no published appeal success rate for Prince William 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 North Northamptonshire 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 North Northamptonshire, 17% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 91 of 534 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 North Northamptonshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Northamptonshire 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

Prince William School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Prince William School, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.93 per place 178 first choices 192 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 154 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 160 first choices 192 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 163 first choices 199 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 159 first choices 185 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 177 first choices 234 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 249 first choices 273 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 221 first choices 233 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 198 first choices 220 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 229 first choices 225 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 227 first choices 241 places
First preferences per place at Prince William School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 241 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Prince William School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 192 178 177 0.93
2017/18 178 154 154 0.87
2018/19 192 160 160 0.83
2019/20 199 163 163 0.82
2020/21 185 159 159 0.86
2021/22 234 177 177 0.76
2022/23 273 249 248 0.91
2023/24 233 221 215 0.95
2024/25 220 198 198 0.9
2025/26 225 229 217 1.02
2026/27 241 227 224 0.94

Places offered

241

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

374 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.7%

224 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 241 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

1,140

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,168

102.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

28

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

260

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 Prince William 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 Prince William 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Prince William School from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,562 places 1,132 on roll 2016/17 1,562 places 1,080 on roll 2017/18 1,562 places 1,082 on roll 2018/19 1,562 places 1,064 on roll 2020/21 1,562 places 1,176 on roll 2021/22 1,562 places 1,220 on roll 2022/23 1,562 places 1,316 on roll 2023/24 1,460 places 1,346 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,355 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
North Northamptonshire

Postcode PE8 4BS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142063).

Other contested secondary schools in North Northamptonshire

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.