School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Etone College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Etone College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 175 and 184 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

184 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Etone College

There is no published appeal success rate for Etone 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 Warwickshire 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 Warwickshire, 20.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 192 of 957 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 Warwickshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Warwickshire 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

Etone College turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 5 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 Etone 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 0.61 per place 50 first choices 82 places 2016/17 0.75 per place 71 first choices 95 places 2017/18 0.67 per place 78 first choices 117 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 129 first choices 148 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 172 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 166 first choices 179 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 168 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 184 first choices 177 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 175 first choices 206 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 257 first choices 200 places 2025/26 1.36 per place 236 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 184 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Etone College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 184 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Etone 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 82 50 50 0.61
2016/17 95 71 70 0.75
2017/18 117 78 69 0.67
2018/19 148 129 101 0.87
2019/20 179 172 142 0.96
2020/21 179 166 148 0.93
2021/22 179 168 143 0.94
2022/23 177 184 146 1.04
2023/24 206 175 143 0.85
2024/25 200 257 179 1.28
2025/26 174 236 170 1.36
2026/27 175 184 164 1.05

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

184

618 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

164 of 184

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 175 offers

How close you had to live

Etone College filled its places in 2025, and 1,979m — 1.23 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the s6 - other children (own a.a) criterion.

Last place offered at

1.23 mi

1,979 metres, 2025

Under criterion

S6 - Other Children (OWN A.A)

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Warwickshire Council, allocation statistics for 2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

948

90.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

102

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Etone 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 Etone College reported 102 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.3% 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 Etone 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 1,000 places 858 on roll 2012/13 1,000 places 930 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 858 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 713 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 707 on roll 2016/17 840 places 709 on roll 2017/18 840 places 729 on roll 2018/19 991 places 763 on roll 2020/21 991 places 901 on roll 2021/22 991 places 972 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,012 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,087 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,160 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
Warwickshire

Postcode CV11 6AA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137771).

Other contested secondary schools in Warwickshire

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.