School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Langley Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 199 families who named Langley Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 177 and 347 put it first.

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

1.96

first choices for every place available

347 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Langley Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Langley 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 Slough 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 Slough, 6.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 1,349 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 Slough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Slough 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

Langley 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 Langley 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 1.69 per place 270 first choices 160 places 2016/17 2.74 per place 395 first choices 144 places 2017/18 1.59 per place 314 first choices 198 places 2018/19 1.46 per place 284 first choices 195 places 2019/20 1.68 per place 289 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.37 per place 243 first choices 177 places 2021/22 2.36 per place 397 first choices 168 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 203 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.58 per place 282 first choices 179 places 2024/25 2.17 per place 389 first choices 179 places 2025/26 2.01 per place 362 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.96 per place 347 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at Langley Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 347 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Langley 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
2015/16 160 270 97 1.69
2016/17 144 395 123 2.74
2017/18 198 314 139 1.59
2018/19 195 284 137 1.46
2019/20 172 289 135 1.68
2020/21 177 243 130 1.37
2021/22 168 397 118 2.36
2022/23 176 203 111 1.15
2023/24 179 282 147 1.58
2024/25 179 389 147 2.17
2025/26 180 362 153 2.01
2026/27 177 347 148 1.96

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

347

1,053 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.7%

148 of 347

Offers to families outside the council

33%

59 of 177 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Langley Grammar School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Langley Grammar School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 In the event of oversubscription Looked After Children, or children who have been Previously L ooked After [see note (b)], will take priority over all other applicants provided they are eligible for consideration. If this happens during the normal admission round, the number of places available to other applicants will be reduced accordingly.
2 To resolve issues of oversubscription, the School operates a series of Priority Admission Areas as described in the notes [see note (c)]. Where the number of eligible applicants exceeds the number of places available, places will be allocated according to the oversubscription criteria below. In all cases, students must have taken the Consortium 11+ tests and achieved equal to or higher than the eligibility score of 111.
a) Eligible applicants with a permanent home address [see notes (d) & (e)] within the school’s Priority Area 1, up to a maximum of 1 20 places. If there are fewer places available than eligible applicants, places will be allocated firstly to those applicants who attract Pupil Premium funding at the closing date for submission of the Common Application Form [see note (g)], and then in rank order of performance in the entrance examination.
b) Eligible applicants with a permanent home address [see notes (d) & (e)] within the school’s Priority Area 2 and who attract Pupil Premium funding at the closing date for submission of the Common Application Form [see note (g)]
c) Eligible applicants who are children of permanent members of the School staff who have been continuously employed by the school for a period of not less than 2 years prior to the closing date for applications or who have been recruited to fill a vacant pos t for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
d) Eligible applicants with a permanent home address [see notes (d) & (e)] within the school’s Priority Area 2, in rank order of performance in the admission examination.
e) Eligible applicants who live within the school’s Priority Area 3, in rank order of performance in the admission examination. If there are fewer places available than eligible applicants, places will be allocated firstly to those applicants who attract Pupil Premium funding at the closing date for submission of the Common Application Form [see note (g)], and then in rank order of performance in the entrance examination.
f) Eligible applicants who live outside the Priority Admission Areas, in rank order of performance in the admission examination.
3 In the event of two or more eligible applicants being tied for the final place or places, places will allocated to the applicants whose permanent home address is nearest to the School. [see notes (d), (e) & (f)]. If applicants still remained tied, the Governors will exercise their discretion to admit above the Planned Admission Number.
4 Year 7 admissions to Langley Grammar School are co -ordinated through the Slough LA’s Co -ordinated Scheme and its timetable. Applications should be submitted on the Common Application Form to the local authority responsible for the parental address.
5 All applicants who score 111 or above in the 11+ entrance examination but who may not be offered a place initially st due to over -subscription will be placed on a waiting list. This initial waiting list will operate until 31 December 202 7. The position of each applicant on the waiting list is determined through the application of the over - subscription criteria above. Each time an applicant joins or leaves the waiting list, the rank order of remaining applicants will be re -assessed. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Langley Grammar School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

937

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

903

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

34

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

370

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 Langley 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 Langley Grammar School reported 34 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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 Langley Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,120 places 1,043 on roll 2011/12 1,045 places 1,044 on roll 2012/13 1,045 places 1,047 on roll 2013/14 1,045 places 1,063 on roll 2014/15 1,045 places 1,078 on roll 2015/16 1,045 places 1,083 on roll 2016/17 1,045 places 1,077 on roll 2017/18 1,270 places 1,096 on roll 2018/19 1,270 places 1,139 on roll 2020/21 1,270 places 1,210 on roll 2021/22 1,270 places 1,241 on roll 2022/23 1,270 places 1,266 on roll 2023/24 1,270 places 1,286 on roll 2024/25 1,307 places 1,273 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. Langley Grammar School has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in 2 of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Langley Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 September 2022 No fault found ADA3927
13 October 2020 Arrangements did not comply case reference number ADA3677
20 December 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2562

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
Slough

Postcode SL3 7QS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136521).

Other contested secondary schools in Slough

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.