School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Robert Clack School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named Robert Clack School as their first choice did not get a place: 430 put it first and 425 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

430 first preferences for 507 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Robert Clack School

There is no published appeal success rate for Robert Clack 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

Robert Clack School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 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 Robert Clack 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 1.17 per place 421 first choices 360 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 476 first choices 355 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 522 first choices 356 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 495 first choices 360 places 2019/20 1.39 per place 499 first choices 360 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 438 first choices 480 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 432 first choices 539 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 472 first choices 540 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 547 first choices 540 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 509 first choices 536 places 2025/26 0.86 per place 413 first choices 479 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 430 first choices 507 places
First preferences per place at Robert Clack School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 430 first preferences for 507 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Robert Clack School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 360 421 310 1.17
2016/17 355 476 297 1.34
2017/18 356 522 327 1.47
2018/19 360 495 325 1.38
2019/20 360 499 319 1.39
2020/21 480 438 384 0.91
2021/22 539 432 416 0.8
2022/23 540 472 442 0.87
2023/24 540 547 467 1.01
2024/25 536 509 455 0.95
2025/26 479 413 413 0.86
2026/27 507 430 425 0.85

Places offered

507

in 2026/27

Named first choice

430

1,147 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.8%

425 of 430

Offers to families outside the council

8%

42 of 502 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

3,330

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

2,777

83.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

553

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

567

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 Robert Clack 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 Robert Clack School reported 553 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.4% 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 Robert Clack School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,950 3,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,852 places 1,776 on roll 2010/11 2,025 places 1,833 on roll 2011/12 2,025 places 1,833 on roll 2012/13 2,025 places 1,838 on roll 2013/14 2,025 places 1,823 on roll 2014/15 2,025 places 1,809 on roll 2015/16 2,085 places 1,830 on roll 2016/17 2,085 places 1,880 on roll 2017/18 2,205 places 1,930 on roll 2018/19 2,254 places 2,008 on roll 2020/21 3,897 places 2,299 on roll 2021/22 3,897 places 2,497 on roll 2022/23 3,897 places 2,661 on roll 2023/24 3,897 places 2,910 on roll 2024/25 3,897 places 3,123 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. Robert Clack School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Robert Clack School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
10 June 2011 No fault found VAR/503

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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barking and Dagenham

Postcode RM8 1JU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101245).

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.