School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Warren School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named The Warren School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 239 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

239 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Warren School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Warren 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

The Warren School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 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 The Warren 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 0.53 per place 70 first choices 132 places 2016/17 0.44 per place 83 first choices 190 places 2017/18 0.53 per place 83 first choices 156 places 2018/19 0.52 per place 98 first choices 190 places 2019/20 0.59 per place 104 first choices 175 places 2020/21 0.75 per place 127 first choices 169 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 139 first choices 158 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 136 first choices 152 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 158 first choices 198 places 2024/25 0.78 per place 174 first choices 222 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 203 first choices 239 places 2026/27 1 per place 239 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at The Warren School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 239 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Warren School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 132 70 70 0.53
2016/17 190 83 83 0.44
2017/18 156 83 83 0.53
2018/19 190 98 98 0.52
2019/20 175 104 104 0.59
2020/21 169 127 126 0.75
2021/22 158 139 138 0.88
2022/23 152 136 136 0.89
2023/24 198 158 158 0.8
2024/25 222 174 174 0.78
2025/26 239 203 199 0.85
2026/27 240 239 204 1

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

239

611 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.4%

204 of 239

Offers to families outside the council

21%

49 of 238 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

1,233

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,098

89.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

135

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

238

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 Warren 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 Warren School reported 135 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.1% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Warren School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,380 places 1,176 on roll 2015/16 1,380 places 1,238 on roll 2016/17 1,380 places 1,209 on roll 2017/18 1,380 places 1,194 on roll 2018/19 1,471 places 1,180 on roll 2020/21 1,471 places 1,282 on roll 2021/22 1,471 places 1,310 on roll 2022/23 1,471 places 1,325 on roll 2023/24 1,471 places 1,332 on roll 2024/25 1,471 places 1,374 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barking and Dagenham

Postcode RM6 6SB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141178).

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.