School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Newlands Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Newlands Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 189 and 244 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.

1.29

first choices for every place available

244 first preferences for 189 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Newlands Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Newlands Girls' 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

Newlands Girls' School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 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 Newlands Girls' 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 185 first choices 186 places 2016/17 1.05 per place 194 first choices 185 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 229 first choices 189 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 241 first choices 192 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 201 first choices 190 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 250 first choices 192 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 217 first choices 191 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 233 first choices 193 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 227 first choices 192 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 214 first choices 192 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 225 first choices 191 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 244 first choices 189 places
First preferences per place at Newlands Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 244 first preferences for 189 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Newlands Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 186 185 160 0.99
2016/17 185 194 167 1.05
2017/18 189 229 172 1.21
2018/19 192 241 173 1.26
2019/20 190 201 163 1.06
2020/21 192 250 178 1.3
2021/22 191 217 165 1.14
2022/23 193 233 181 1.21
2023/24 192 227 176 1.18
2024/25 192 214 178 1.11
2025/26 191 225 179 1.18
2026/27 189 244 170 1.29

Places offered

189

in 2026/27

Named first choice

244

631 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.7%

170 of 244

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 189 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 110051.

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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

960

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

223

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 Newlands Girls' 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 Newlands Girls' School 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Newlands Girls' School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,157 places 1,152 on roll 2010/11 1,185 places 1,180 on roll 2011/12 1,185 places 1,185 on roll 2012/13 1,196 places 1,148 on roll 2013/14 1,159 places 1,140 on roll 2014/15 1,157 places 1,130 on roll 2015/16 1,148 places 1,128 on roll 2016/17 1,185 places 1,158 on roll 2017/18 1,188 places 1,152 on roll 2018/19 1,181 places 1,157 on roll 2020/21 1,183 places 1,185 on roll 2021/22 1,190 places 1,162 on roll 2022/23 1,173 places 1,158 on roll 2023/24 1,183 places 1,198 on roll 2024/25 1,183 places 1,240 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. Newlands Girls' School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Newlands Girls' School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 August 2018 No fault found ADA3381

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 SL6 5JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142357).

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.