School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Little Heath School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Little Heath School as their first choice did not get a place: 219 put it first and 217 of them were offered one.

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

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

219 first preferences for 260 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Little Heath School

There is no published appeal success rate for Little Heath 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 West Berkshire 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 West Berkshire, 25.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 36 of 139 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 West Berkshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not West Berkshire 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

Little Heath School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 1 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 Little Heath 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 0.84 per place 218 first choices 258 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 225 first choices 258 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 260 first choices 270 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 254 first choices 260 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 309 first choices 266 places 2020/21 1 per place 268 first choices 268 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 257 first choices 274 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 225 first choices 267 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 276 first choices 269 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 282 first choices 265 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 224 first choices 257 places 2026/27 0.84 per place 219 first choices 260 places
First preferences per place at Little Heath School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 260 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Little Heath School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 258 218 218 0.84
2016/17 258 225 225 0.87
2017/18 270 260 244 0.96
2018/19 260 254 228 0.98
2019/20 266 309 233 1.16
2020/21 268 268 243 1
2021/22 274 257 238 0.94
2022/23 267 225 210 0.84
2023/24 269 276 256 1.03
2024/25 265 282 245 1.06
2025/26 257 224 224 0.87
2026/27 260 219 217 0.84

Places offered

260

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

490 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.1%

217 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

55%

143 of 260 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

1,454

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,291

88.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

163

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

361

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 Little Heath 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 Little Heath School reported 163 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Little Heath School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,665 places 1,705 on roll 2010/11 1,850 places 1,727 on roll 2011/12 1,850 places 1,728 on roll 2012/13 1,850 places 1,682 on roll 2013/14 1,661 places 1,636 on roll 2014/15 1,661 places 1,614 on roll 2015/16 1,661 places 1,646 on roll 2016/17 1,661 places 1,637 on roll 2017/18 1,661 places 1,594 on roll 2018/19 1,661 places 1,589 on roll 2020/21 1,661 places 1,643 on roll 2021/22 1,661 places 1,643 on roll 2022/23 1,661 places 1,656 on roll 2023/24 1,672 places 1,662 on roll 2024/25 1,815 places 1,665 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Berkshire

Postcode RG31 5TY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 110063).

Other contested secondary schools in West Berkshire

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.