School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Crispin's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named St Crispin's School as their first choice did not get a place: 214 put it first and 191 of them were offered one.

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

23

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

214 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Crispin's School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Crispin's 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

St Crispin's School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 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 St Crispin's 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 1.54 per place 276 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 226 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 205 first choices 187 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 224 first choices 184 places 2019/20 1.17 per place 231 first choices 198 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 251 first choices 194 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 222 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 205 first choices 286 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 233 first choices 252 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 231 first choices 245 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 237 first choices 252 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 214 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at St Crispin's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 214 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Crispin's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 276 179 1.54
2016/17 178 226 173 1.27
2017/18 187 205 182 1.1
2018/19 184 224 174 1.22
2019/20 198 231 181 1.17
2020/21 194 251 183 1.29
2021/22 199 222 190 1.12
2022/23 286 205 205 0.72
2023/24 252 233 212 0.92
2024/25 245 231 207 0.94
2025/26 252 237 225 0.94
2026/27 222 214 191 0.96

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

214

790 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.3%

191 of 214

Offers to families outside the council

4%

8 of 222 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 110059.

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

1,376

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,236

89.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

140

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

230

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 St Crispin's 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 St Crispin's School reported 140 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Crispin's School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,091 places 1,092 on roll 2010/11 1,091 places 1,083 on roll 2011/12 1,123 places 1,102 on roll 2012/13 1,123 places 1,100 on roll 2013/14 1,123 places 1,119 on roll 2014/15 1,123 places 1,129 on roll 2015/16 1,123 places 1,125 on roll 2016/17 1,123 places 1,101 on roll 2017/18 1,175 places 1,128 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,178 on roll 2020/21 1,230 places 1,235 on roll 2021/22 1,230 places 1,291 on roll 2022/23 1,340 places 1,393 on roll 2023/24 1,340 places 1,460 on roll 2024/25 1,606 places 1,496 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 RG40 1SS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145286).

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.