School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Goresbrook School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Goresbrook School as their first choice did not get a place: 114 put it first and 74 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Barking and Dagenham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

40

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

114 first preferences for 124 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Goresbrook School

There is no published appeal success rate for Goresbrook 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 Barking and Dagenham 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 Barking and Dagenham, 10.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 265 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 Barking and Dagenham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Barking and Dagenham 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

Goresbrook School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 11 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Goresbrook School, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.41 per place 48 first choices 118 places 2017/18 0.5 per place 51 first choices 102 places 2018/19 0.38 per place 46 first choices 120 places 2019/20 0.7 per place 61 first choices 87 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 48 first choices 78 places 2021/22 0.59 per place 66 first choices 111 places 2022/23 0.68 per place 64 first choices 94 places 2023/24 0.59 per place 69 first choices 117 places 2024/25 0.54 per place 61 first choices 113 places 2025/26 0.55 per place 58 first choices 105 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 114 first choices 124 places
First preferences per place at Goresbrook School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 114 first preferences for 124 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Goresbrook School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 118 48 47 0.41
2017/18 102 51 51 0.5
2018/19 120 46 46 0.38
2019/20 87 61 61 0.7
2020/21 78 48 48 0.62
2021/22 111 66 66 0.59
2022/23 94 64 64 0.68
2023/24 117 69 68 0.59
2024/25 113 61 59 0.54
2025/26 105 58 58 0.55
2026/27 124 114 74 0.92

Places offered

124

in 2026/27

Named first choice

114

559 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.9%

74 of 114

Offers to families outside the council

4%

4 of 92 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

1,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

918

74.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

312

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

90

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 Goresbrook 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 Goresbrook School reported 312 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.6% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Goresbrook School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,320 places 69 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 144 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 331 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 502 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 670 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 976 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,051 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,089 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,070 on roll 2024/25 1,320 places 1,003 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barking and Dagenham

Postcode RM9 6XW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140962).

Other contested secondary schools in Barking and Dagenham

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.