School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trinity School?

In 2026/27, Trinity School offered 209 places and 202 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.97

first choices for every place available

202 first preferences for 209 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trinity School

There is no published appeal success rate for Trinity 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

Trinity 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 Trinity 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 0.99 per place 176 first choices 177 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 145 first choices 167 places 2017/18 0.83 per place 159 first choices 191 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 181 first choices 195 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 192 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1 per place 207 first choices 206 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 169 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.81 per place 212 first choices 261 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 229 first choices 232 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 238 first choices 230 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 224 first choices 221 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 202 first choices 209 places
First preferences per place at Trinity School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 209 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trinity School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 176 174 0.99
2016/17 167 145 145 0.87
2017/18 191 159 159 0.83
2018/19 195 181 181 0.93
2019/20 207 192 186 0.93
2020/21 206 207 185 1
2021/22 199 169 169 0.85
2022/23 261 212 210 0.81
2023/24 232 229 197 0.99
2024/25 230 238 201 1.03
2025/26 221 224 199 1.01
2026/27 209 202 202 0.97

Places offered

209

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

397 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

202 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 209 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

1,213

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,169

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

44

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

125

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 Trinity 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 Trinity School reported 44 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Trinity School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,040 places 850 on roll 2013/14 1,040 places 843 on roll 2014/15 1,040 places 860 on roll 2015/16 1,040 places 897 on roll 2016/17 1,040 places 910 on roll 2017/18 1,040 places 918 on roll 2018/19 1,040 places 953 on roll 2020/21 1,106 places 1,080 on roll 2021/22 1,175 places 1,139 on roll 2022/23 1,269 places 1,231 on roll 2023/24 1,269 places 1,295 on roll 2024/25 1,338 places 1,341 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
West Berkshire

Postcode RG14 2DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138525).

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.