School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: 146 put it first and 128 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.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

146 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Queen Elizabeth's Girls' 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

Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 7 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 Queen Elizabeth's Girls' 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 0.61 per place 110 first choices 180 places 2016/17 0.73 per place 131 first choices 179 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 128 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 151 first choices 193 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 190 first choices 180 places 2020/21 0.77 per place 161 first choices 210 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 153 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.81 per place 169 first choices 209 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 173 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.68 per place 142 first choices 208 places 2025/26 0.54 per place 112 first choices 208 places 2026/27 0.72 per place 146 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 146 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 110 109 0.61
2016/17 179 131 112 0.73
2017/18 180 128 109 0.71
2018/19 193 151 125 0.78
2019/20 180 190 141 1.06
2020/21 210 161 145 0.77
2021/22 180 153 128 0.85
2022/23 209 169 147 0.81
2023/24 208 173 146 0.83
2024/25 208 142 130 0.68
2025/26 208 112 107 0.54
2026/27 204 146 128 0.72

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

146

601 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.7%

128 of 146

Offers to families outside the council

20%

41 of 204 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

964

107.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

64

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

246

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 Queen Elizabeth's Girls' 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 Queen Elizabeth's Girls' 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 Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,146 places 1,162 on roll 2012/13 1,146 places 1,172 on roll 2013/14 1,146 places 1,166 on roll 2014/15 1,146 places 1,129 on roll 2015/16 1,146 places 1,085 on roll 2016/17 1,146 places 1,039 on roll 2017/18 1,146 places 1,006 on roll 2018/19 1,146 places 1,040 on roll 2020/21 1,146 places 1,048 on roll 2021/22 1,146 places 1,080 on roll 2022/23 1,146 places 1,137 on roll 2023/24 1,146 places 1,146 on roll 2024/25 1,146 places 1,113 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 EN5 5RR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137131).

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.