School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Holt School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 57 families who named The Holt School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 and 276 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

276 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Holt School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Holt 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

The Holt School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 4 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 The Holt 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 1.19 per place 248 first choices 209 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 218 first choices 209 places 2017/18 1.3 per place 271 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1 per place 241 first choices 241 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 234 first choices 239 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 233 first choices 239 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 230 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 314 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 334 first choices 254 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 306 first choices 236 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 257 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 276 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at The Holt School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 276 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Holt School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 248 187 1.19
2016/17 209 218 191 1.04
2017/18 209 271 200 1.3
2018/19 241 241 208 1
2019/20 239 234 185 0.98
2020/21 239 233 196 0.97
2021/22 240 230 176 0.96
2022/23 238 314 225 1.32
2023/24 254 334 230 1.31
2024/25 236 306 215 1.3
2025/26 236 257 204 1.09
2026/27 237 276 219 1.16

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

276

607 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.3%

219 of 276

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 237 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

1,198

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,199

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

247

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 The Holt 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 The Holt 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Holt School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,209 places 1,262 on roll 2012/13 1,209 places 1,239 on roll 2013/14 1,209 places 1,230 on roll 2014/15 1,209 places 1,243 on roll 2015/16 1,209 places 1,261 on roll 2016/17 1,209 places 1,252 on roll 2017/18 1,209 places 1,234 on roll 2018/19 1,315 places 1,251 on roll 2020/21 1,447 places 1,367 on roll 2021/22 1,447 places 1,424 on roll 2022/23 1,447 places 1,406 on roll 2023/24 1,447 places 1,417 on roll 2024/25 1,445 places 1,457 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. The Holt School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Holt School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
6 July 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3910

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
Wokingham

Postcode RG41 1EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136880).

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.