School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 26 families who named Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College as their first choice did not get a place: 157 put it first and 131 of them were offered one.

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

26

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

157 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College

There is no published appeal success rate for Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, 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

Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, 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 0.87 per place 155 first choices 178 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 179 first choices 181 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 168 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 158 first choices 169 places 2019/20 0.83 per place 156 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 140 first choices 174 places 2021/22 0.53 per place 90 first choices 169 places 2022/23 0.7 per place 124 first choices 178 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 150 first choices 170 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 156 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 155 first choices 178 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 157 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 157 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 155 133 0.87
2016/17 181 179 133 0.99
2017/18 178 168 134 0.94
2018/19 169 158 132 0.93
2019/20 189 156 130 0.83
2020/21 174 140 125 0.8
2021/22 169 90 90 0.53
2022/23 178 124 122 0.7
2023/24 170 150 107 0.88
2024/25 177 156 125 0.88
2025/26 178 155 134 0.87
2026/27 172 157 131 0.91

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

157

470 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.4%

131 of 157

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 172 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College 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 Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, 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 Looked after children and previously looked after children. (See note 2)
2 Current students at Slough and Eton or another SEBMAT School
3 Siblings of students at Slough and Eton
4 All other applicants Further information Further information can be obtained from the Admissions Administrators at the school Year7Admissions@slougheton.com for Year 7 and inyearadmissions@slougheton.com for Year 8 to 11 and Sixthformadmin@slougheton.com for Year 12 and 13

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.

Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College'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

1,005

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

89.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

108

across Years 7 to 11

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 Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College 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 Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College reported 108 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,066 places 1,003 on roll 2012/13 1,066 places 1,045 on roll 2013/14 1,066 places 1,096 on roll 2014/15 1,066 places 1,113 on roll 2015/16 1,066 places 1,117 on roll 2016/17 1,066 places 1,126 on roll 2017/18 1,160 places 1,151 on roll 2018/19 1,160 places 1,135 on roll 2020/21 1,160 places 1,111 on roll 2021/22 1,160 places 1,140 on roll 2022/23 1,160 places 1,157 on roll 2023/24 1,160 places 1,178 on roll 2024/25 1,265 places 1,177 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Slough

Postcode SL1 2PU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137287).

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.