School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Maiden Erlegh School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 92 families who named Maiden Erlegh School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 268 and 297 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

297 first preferences for 268 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Maiden Erlegh School

There is no published appeal success rate for Maiden Erlegh 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 Wokingham 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 Wokingham, 7.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 16 of 202 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 Wokingham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wokingham 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

Maiden Erlegh 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.

First preferences per place at Maiden Erlegh 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 1.27 per place 345 first choices 271 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 325 first choices 272 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 324 first choices 265 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 316 first choices 272 places 2019/20 1.39 per place 372 first choices 267 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 337 first choices 274 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 343 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.7 per place 439 first choices 258 places 2023/24 1.43 per place 383 first choices 267 places 2024/25 1.41 per place 371 first choices 264 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 357 first choices 272 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 297 first choices 268 places
First preferences per place at Maiden Erlegh School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 297 first preferences for 268 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Maiden Erlegh School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 271 345 238 1.27
2016/17 272 325 248 1.19
2017/18 265 324 233 1.22
2018/19 272 316 234 1.16
2019/20 267 372 232 1.39
2020/21 274 337 237 1.23
2021/22 268 343 200 1.28
2022/23 258 439 214 1.7
2023/24 267 383 222 1.43
2024/25 264 371 227 1.41
2025/26 272 357 215 1.31
2026/27 268 297 205 1.11

Places offered

268

in 2026/27

Named first choice

297

838 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69%

205 of 297

Offers to families outside the council

9%

23 of 268 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

1,548

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,410

91.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

138

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

397

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 Maiden Erlegh 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 Maiden Erlegh School reported 138 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.1% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Maiden Erlegh School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,788 places 1,796 on roll 2011/12 1,788 places 1,820 on roll 2012/13 1,788 places 1,816 on roll 2013/14 1,788 places 1,789 on roll 2014/15 1,788 places 1,801 on roll 2015/16 1,788 places 1,793 on roll 2016/17 1,788 places 1,774 on roll 2017/18 1,788 places 1,787 on roll 2018/19 1,788 places 1,823 on roll 2020/21 1,788 places 1,825 on roll 2021/22 1,788 places 1,861 on roll 2022/23 1,787 places 1,861 on roll 2023/24 1,787 places 1,844 on roll 2024/25 1,945 places 1,868 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
Wokingham

Postcode RG6 7HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136637).

Other contested secondary schools in Wokingham

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.