School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre as their first choice did not get a place: 191 put it first and 183 of them were offered one.

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

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

191 first preferences for 243 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre

There is no published appeal success rate for Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Reading 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 Reading, 7.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 14 of 180 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 Reading.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Reading 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

Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 4 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 Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre, 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 per place 217 first choices 217 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 205 first choices 217 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 223 first choices 249 places 2018/19 1.23 per place 302 first choices 246 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 294 first choices 276 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 283 first choices 248 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 265 first choices 248 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 271 first choices 246 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 227 first choices 250 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 211 first choices 243 places 2025/26 0.74 per place 182 first choices 245 places 2026/27 0.79 per place 191 first choices 243 places
First preferences per place at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 243 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 217 217 191 1
2016/17 217 205 177 0.94
2017/18 249 223 205 0.9
2018/19 246 302 206 1.23
2019/20 276 294 230 1.07
2020/21 248 283 208 1.14
2021/22 248 265 185 1.07
2022/23 246 271 204 1.1
2023/24 250 227 203 0.91
2024/25 243 211 182 0.87
2025/26 245 182 182 0.74
2026/27 243 191 183 0.79

Places offered

243

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

479 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.8%

183 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 243 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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,229

98.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

190

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 Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre 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 Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.3% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,440 places 1,342 on roll 2011/12 1,440 places 1,329 on roll 2012/13 1,440 places 1,344 on roll 2013/14 1,440 places 1,304 on roll 2014/15 1,440 places 1,279 on roll 2015/16 1,440 places 1,256 on roll 2016/17 1,440 places 1,260 on roll 2017/18 1,440 places 1,310 on roll 2018/19 1,440 places 1,347 on roll 2020/21 1,440 places 1,502 on roll 2021/22 1,440 places 1,567 on roll 2022/23 1,440 places 1,570 on roll 2023/24 1,440 places 1,562 on roll 2024/25 1,440 places 1,553 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
Reading

Postcode RG4 8LR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136307).

Other contested secondary schools in Reading

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.