School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Henrietta Barnett School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 104 families who named The Henrietta Barnett School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 220 put it first.

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

1.83

first choices for every place available

220 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Henrietta Barnett School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Henrietta Barnett 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

The Henrietta Barnett 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 The Henrietta Barnett School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 3.2 per place 317 first choices 99 places 2016/17 2.84 per place 264 first choices 93 places 2017/18 2.26 per place 235 first choices 104 places 2018/19 2.46 per place 241 first choices 98 places 2019/20 2.06 per place 216 first choices 105 places 2020/21 1.95 per place 203 first choices 104 places 2021/22 3.34 per place 347 first choices 104 places 2022/23 2.2 per place 222 first choices 101 places 2023/24 2.19 per place 228 first choices 104 places 2024/25 1.95 per place 199 first choices 102 places 2025/26 2.38 per place 238 first choices 100 places 2026/27 1.83 per place 220 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at The Henrietta Barnett School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Henrietta Barnett 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 99 317 97 3.2
2016/17 93 264 89 2.84
2017/18 104 235 104 2.26
2018/19 98 241 98 2.46
2019/20 105 216 104 2.06
2020/21 104 203 103 1.95
2021/22 104 347 101 3.34
2022/23 101 222 99 2.2
2023/24 104 228 103 2.19
2024/25 102 199 97 1.95
2025/26 100 238 99 2.38
2026/27 120 220 116 1.83

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

365 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

52.7%

116 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

73%

88 of 120 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

545

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

521

95.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

282

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 Henrietta Barnett 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 Henrietta Barnett School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.6% 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 The Henrietta Barnett School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 715 places 697 on roll 2012/13 715 places 709 on roll 2013/14 715 places 714 on roll 2014/15 715 places 730 on roll 2015/16 715 places 743 on roll 2016/17 715 places 759 on roll 2017/18 779 places 774 on roll 2018/19 779 places 782 on roll 2020/21 779 places 800 on roll 2021/22 779 places 793 on roll 2022/23 779 places 794 on roll 2023/24 779 places 792 on roll 2024/25 827 places 807 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Henrietta Barnett School has been the subject of 4 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in 2 of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Henrietta Barnett School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
31 January 2020 No fault found ADA3525
13 November 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3535
30 August 2017 No fault found ADA3318
20 July 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3115

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnet

Postcode NW11 7BN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138051).

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.