School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Westgate School?

In 2026/27, The Westgate School offered 215 places and 144 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.67

first choices for every place available

144 first preferences for 215 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Westgate School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Westgate 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

The Westgate School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 2 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 The Westgate School, 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 1.27 per place 225 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 206 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 221 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1 per place 234 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 248 first choices 230 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 259 first choices 231 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 225 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 298 first choices 241 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 278 first choices 233 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 234 first choices 240 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 192 first choices 237 places 2026/27 0.67 per place 144 first choices 215 places
First preferences per place at The Westgate School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 144 first preferences for 215 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Westgate School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 225 157 1.27
2016/17 177 206 149 1.16
2017/18 180 221 158 1.23
2018/19 233 234 192 1
2019/20 230 248 190 1.08
2020/21 231 259 188 1.12
2021/22 240 225 171 0.94
2022/23 241 298 209 1.24
2023/24 233 278 191 1.19
2024/25 240 234 191 0.97
2025/26 237 192 180 0.81
2026/27 215 144 144 0.67

Places offered

215

in 2026/27

Named first choice

144

464 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

144 of 144

Offers to families outside the council

5%

10 of 207 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

1,175

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,203

102.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

28

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 The Westgate 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 The Westgate 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Westgate School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,040 places 961 on roll 2012/13 1,040 places 954 on roll 2013/14 1,040 places 981 on roll 2014/15 1,040 places 986 on roll 2015/16 1,040 places 989 on roll 2016/17 1,040 places 955 on roll 2017/18 1,040 places 1,006 on roll 2018/19 1,375 places 1,087 on roll 2020/21 1,375 places 1,218 on roll 2021/22 1,375 places 1,285 on roll 2022/23 1,375 places 1,337 on roll 2023/24 1,375 places 1,327 on roll 2024/25 1,375 places 1,301 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
Slough

Postcode SL1 5AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138012).

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.