School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Maiden Erlegh School in Reading?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Maiden Erlegh School in Reading as their first choice did not get a place: 131 put it first and 109 of them were offered one.

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

22

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

131 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Maiden Erlegh School in Reading

There is no published appeal success rate for Maiden Erlegh School in Reading, 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

Maiden Erlegh School in Reading turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Maiden Erlegh School in Reading, 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 0.88 per place 156 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 216 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.14 per place 198 first choices 173 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 220 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 148 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 120 first choices 178 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 153 first choices 178 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 158 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 175 first choices 180 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 143 first choices 177 places 2026/27 0.78 per place 131 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at Maiden Erlegh School in Reading. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 131 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Maiden Erlegh School in Reading, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 177 156 132 0.88
2017/18 179 216 142 1.21
2018/19 173 198 128 1.14
2019/20 189 220 160 1.16
2020/21 175 148 121 0.85
2021/22 178 120 106 0.67
2022/23 178 153 122 0.86
2023/24 180 158 133 0.88
2024/25 180 175 128 0.97
2025/26 177 143 129 0.81
2026/27 169 131 109 0.78

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

131

499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.2%

109 of 131

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 169 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

885

98.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Maiden Erlegh School in Reading 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 Maiden Erlegh School in Reading reported 15 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Maiden Erlegh School in Reading from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 900 places 173 on roll 2016/17 900 places 358 on roll 2017/18 900 places 538 on roll 2018/19 900 places 714 on roll 2020/21 900 places 883 on roll 2021/22 900 places 887 on roll 2022/23 900 places 891 on roll 2023/24 900 places 890 on roll 2024/25 900 places 885 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Reading

Postcode RG1 5SL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141886).

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.