School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Mill Hill County High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 125 families who named Mill Hill County High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 324 put it first.

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

1.40

first choices for every place available

324 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Mill Hill County High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Mill Hill County High 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 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

Mill Hill County High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Mill Hill County High 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 1.52 per place 349 first choices 230 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 315 first choices 234 places 2017/18 1.36 per place 357 first choices 263 places 2018/19 1.78 per place 411 first choices 231 places 2019/20 1.89 per place 434 first choices 230 places 2020/21 1.87 per place 433 first choices 232 places 2021/22 1.9 per place 442 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.59 per place 418 first choices 263 places 2023/24 1.72 per place 403 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.67 per place 396 first choices 237 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 316 first choices 230 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 324 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Mill Hill County High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 324 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Mill Hill County High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 230 349 189 1.52
2016/17 234 315 186 1.35
2017/18 263 357 215 1.36
2018/19 231 411 178 1.78
2019/20 230 434 192 1.89
2020/21 232 433 191 1.87
2021/22 233 442 185 1.9
2022/23 263 418 225 1.59
2023/24 234 403 205 1.72
2024/25 237 396 200 1.67
2025/26 230 316 187 1.37
2026/27 232 324 199 1.4

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

324

947 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.4%

199 of 324

Offers to families outside the council

13%

31 of 232 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

1,247

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

14

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

443

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 Mill Hill County High 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 Mill Hill County High 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 Mill Hill County High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,538 places 1,724 on roll 2012/13 1,538 places 1,701 on roll 2013/14 1,538 places 1,702 on roll 2014/15 1,676 places 1,673 on roll 2015/16 1,676 places 1,658 on roll 2016/17 1,676 places 1,649 on roll 2017/18 1,676 places 1,682 on roll 2018/19 1,676 places 1,678 on roll 2020/21 1,676 places 1,674 on roll 2021/22 1,676 places 1,684 on roll 2022/23 1,676 places 1,708 on roll 2023/24 1,676 places 1,683 on roll 2024/25 1,676 places 1,650 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 NW7 4LL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137386).

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.