School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Furze Platt Senior School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Furze Platt Senior School as their first choice did not get a place: 199 put it first and 192 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

199 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Furze Platt Senior School

There is no published appeal success rate for Furze Platt Senior 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

Furze Platt Senior School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 2 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 Furze Platt Senior 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 1.37 per place 254 first choices 186 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 204 first choices 219 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 185 first choices 221 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 241 first choices 217 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 236 first choices 231 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 229 first choices 253 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 239 first choices 257 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 238 first choices 256 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 296 first choices 258 places 2024/25 1 per place 253 first choices 253 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 225 first choices 259 places 2026/27 0.8 per place 199 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Furze Platt Senior School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Furze Platt Senior School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 186 254 178 1.37
2016/17 219 204 203 0.93
2017/18 221 185 178 0.84
2018/19 217 241 203 1.11
2019/20 231 236 204 1.02
2020/21 253 229 211 0.91
2021/22 257 239 208 0.93
2022/23 256 238 216 0.93
2023/24 258 296 233 1.15
2024/25 253 253 219 1
2025/26 259 225 210 0.87
2026/27 250 199 192 0.8

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

1,019 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.5%

192 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 250 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

1,265

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,262

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

362

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 Furze Platt Senior 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 Furze Platt Senior School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Furze Platt Senior School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,170 places 1,217 on roll 2012/13 1,231 places 1,248 on roll 2013/14 1,304 places 1,244 on roll 2014/15 1,304 places 1,270 on roll 2015/16 1,243 places 1,241 on roll 2016/17 1,339 places 1,238 on roll 2017/18 1,284 places 1,269 on roll 2018/19 1,312 places 1,295 on roll 2020/21 1,652 places 1,398 on roll 2021/22 1,647 places 1,438 on roll 2022/23 1,645 places 1,511 on roll 2023/24 1,627 places 1,527 on roll 2024/25 1,627 places 1,530 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
Windsor and Maidenhead

Postcode SL6 7NQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137740).

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.