School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holyport College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 91 families who named Holyport College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 63 and 150 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.

2.38

first choices for every place available

150 first preferences for 63 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holyport College

There is no published appeal success rate for Holyport College, 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

Holyport College 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.

First preferences per place at Holyport College, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 1.1 2.3 3.4 4.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 3.89 per place 148 first choices 38 places 2016/17 3.11 per place 115 first choices 37 places 2017/18 4.05 per place 154 first choices 38 places 2018/19 2.59 per place 106 first choices 41 places 2019/20 3 per place 114 first choices 38 places 2020/21 2.09 per place 142 first choices 68 places 2021/22 2.51 per place 163 first choices 65 places 2022/23 2.37 per place 166 first choices 70 places 2023/24 2.11 per place 158 first choices 75 places 2024/25 2.09 per place 134 first choices 64 places 2025/26 2.09 per place 136 first choices 65 places 2026/27 2.38 per place 150 first choices 63 places
First preferences per place at Holyport College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 150 first preferences for 63 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holyport College, 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 38 148 35 3.89
2016/17 37 115 32 3.11
2017/18 38 154 28 4.05
2018/19 41 106 32 2.59
2019/20 38 114 32 3
2020/21 68 142 56 2.09
2021/22 65 163 55 2.51
2022/23 70 166 62 2.37
2023/24 75 158 69 2.11
2024/25 64 134 59 2.09
2025/26 65 136 60 2.09
2026/27 63 150 59 2.38

Places offered

63

in 2026/27

Named first choice

150

940 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

39.3%

59 of 150

Offers to families outside the council

10%

6 of 63 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

410

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

441

107.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

31

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

190

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 Holyport College 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 Holyport College was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Holyport College from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 500 places 117 on roll 2015/16 500 places 263 on roll 2016/17 548 places 355 on roll 2017/18 548 places 445 on roll 2018/19 548 places 505 on roll 2020/21 600 places 575 on roll 2021/22 600 places 592 on roll 2022/23 600 places 584 on roll 2023/24 600 places 619 on roll 2024/25 600 places 643 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Windsor and Maidenhead

Postcode SL6 3LE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139971).

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.