Refused a place at Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School?

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School

Across Wiltshire, 24.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 228 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 Wiltshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wiltshire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

• Infant class size
• A mistake in how the decision was made
• Distance and catchment
• Siblings
• Faith and religious criteria
• Medical and social need
• Special educational needs without an EHC plan
• A late application
• In-year admissions
• Grammar schools and the 11-plus
• Sixth form places
• Twins and multiple births

How contested this school has been

Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

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.

On the published figures Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

• How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Wiltshire does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
• How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
• Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.

About the school

Type

Academy converter

Admissions policy

Selective

Religious character

Faith

Entry point

Year 7

Council

Wiltshire

Postcode SP1 2ED. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136500).

Other contested secondary schools in Wiltshire

• South Wilts Grammar School 1.46 first choices per place
• Lavington School 1.22 first choices per place
• St John's Marlborough 1.16 first choices per place
• Hardenhuish School 1.15 first choices per place
• St Augustine's Catholic College 1.05 first choices per place
• The Corsham School 1.03 first choices per place
• Royal Wootton Bassett Academy 0.97 first choices per place
• The Trafalgar School at Downton 0.90 first choices per place