School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Christ's College Finchley?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Christ's College Finchley as their first choice did not get a place: 120 put it first and 86 of them were offered one.

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

34

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

120 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Christ's College Finchley

There is no published appeal success rate for Christ's College Finchley, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Barnet 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 Barnet, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 61 of 405 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 Barnet.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Barnet 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

Christ's College Finchley turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Christ's College Finchley, 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 0.22 per place 28 first choices 126 places 2016/17 0.31 per place 38 first choices 121 places 2017/18 0.27 per place 42 first choices 154 places 2018/19 0.28 per place 52 first choices 184 places 2019/20 0.36 per place 64 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.49 per place 88 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.42 per place 76 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.69 per place 123 first choices 177 places 2023/24 0.65 per place 115 first choices 176 places 2024/25 0.66 per place 109 first choices 165 places 2025/26 0.67 per place 107 first choices 159 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 120 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Christ's College Finchley. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 120 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Christ's College Finchley, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 126 28 28 0.22
2016/17 121 38 38 0.31
2017/18 154 42 42 0.27
2018/19 184 52 52 0.28
2019/20 178 64 63 0.36
2020/21 180 88 80 0.49
2021/22 180 76 71 0.42
2022/23 177 123 89 0.69
2023/24 176 115 89 0.65
2024/25 165 109 97 0.66
2025/26 159 107 92 0.67
2026/27 164 120 86 0.73

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

120

725 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.7%

86 of 120

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 164 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

977

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

840

86% of capacity

Unfilled places

137

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Christ's College Finchley 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 Christ's College Finchley reported 137 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Christ's College Finchley from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,007 places 942 on roll 2012/13 1,007 places 913 on roll 2013/14 1,007 places 906 on roll 2014/15 1,007 places 865 on roll 2015/16 1,007 places 838 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 785 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 747 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 765 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 835 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 872 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 924 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 955 on roll 2024/25 1,217 places 980 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
Barnet

Postcode N2 0SE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137388).

Other contested secondary schools in Barnet

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.