School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saracens High School?

In 2026/27, Saracens High School offered 170 places and 123 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Barnet actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

0.72

first choices for every place available

123 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saracens High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Saracens 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

Saracens High School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 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 Saracens High School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.93 per place 136 first choices 146 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 146 first choices 167 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 163 first choices 179 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 161 first choices 177 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 177 first choices 175 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 173 first choices 172 places 2025/26 0.78 per place 146 first choices 186 places 2026/27 0.72 per place 123 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at Saracens High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 123 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saracens 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
2019/20 146 136 120 0.93
2020/21 167 146 134 0.87
2021/22 179 163 149 0.91
2022/23 177 161 144 0.91
2023/24 175 177 144 1.01
2024/25 172 173 143 1.01
2025/26 186 146 146 0.78
2026/27 170 123 123 0.72

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

123

405 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

123 of 123

Offers to families outside the council

7%

12 of 162 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

971

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

92.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

74

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

230

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 Saracens 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 Saracens High School reported 74 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.4% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Saracens High School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 900 places 156 on roll 2020/21 900 places 474 on roll 2021/22 900 places 657 on roll 2022/23 900 places 832 on roll 2023/24 1,130 places 969 on roll 2024/25 1,201 places 1,121 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnet

Postcode NW9 4AS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145921).

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.