School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Charters School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Charters School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 262 and 265 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

265 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Charters School

There is no published appeal success rate for Charters 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 Windsor and Maidenhead 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 Windsor and Maidenhead, 21.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 40 of 187 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 Windsor and Maidenhead.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Windsor and Maidenhead 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

Charters School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Charters 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 1.2 per place 284 first choices 236 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 250 first choices 233 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 252 first choices 267 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 313 first choices 268 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 326 first choices 300 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 331 first choices 270 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 343 first choices 270 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 342 first choices 270 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 345 first choices 270 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 276 first choices 271 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 300 first choices 270 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 265 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at Charters School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 265 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Charters School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 236 284 233 1.2
2016/17 233 250 221 1.07
2017/18 267 252 239 0.94
2018/19 268 313 251 1.17
2019/20 300 326 276 1.09
2020/21 270 331 254 1.23
2021/22 270 343 255 1.27
2022/23 270 342 253 1.27
2023/24 270 345 251 1.28
2024/25 271 276 249 1.02
2025/26 270 300 255 1.11
2026/27 262 265 222 1.01

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

265

512 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

222 of 265

Offers to families outside the council

48%

124 of 261 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

1,373

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,340

97.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

33

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

360

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 Charters 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 Charters School reported 33 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.6% 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 Charters School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,651 places 1,675 on roll 2013/14 1,666 places 1,718 on roll 2014/15 1,682 places 1,706 on roll 2015/16 1,685 places 1,730 on roll 2016/17 1,685 places 1,679 on roll 2017/18 1,642 places 1,637 on roll 2018/19 1,766 places 1,642 on roll 2020/21 1,798 places 1,728 on roll 2021/22 1,796 places 1,742 on roll 2022/23 1,796 places 1,724 on roll 2023/24 1,733 places 1,705 on roll 2024/25 1,733 places 1,713 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Charters School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Charters School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
25 June 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2850
5 September 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2605

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Windsor and Maidenhead

Postcode SL5 9QY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138823).

Other contested secondary schools in Windsor and Maidenhead

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.