School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Totteridge Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named The Totteridge Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 128 put it first and 108 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.

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

128 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Totteridge Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Totteridge Academy, 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 Totteridge Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 5 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 The Totteridge Academy, 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 35 first choices 161 places 2016/17 0.25 per place 36 first choices 143 places 2017/18 0.26 per place 35 first choices 133 places 2018/19 0.28 per place 55 first choices 197 places 2019/20 0.41 per place 73 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 142 first choices 181 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 171 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 161 first choices 174 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 166 first choices 174 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 164 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 211 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 128 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at The Totteridge Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 128 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Totteridge Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 161 35 35 0.22
2016/17 143 36 36 0.25
2017/18 133 35 35 0.26
2018/19 197 55 55 0.28
2019/20 179 73 73 0.41
2020/21 181 142 130 0.78
2021/22 175 171 143 0.98
2022/23 174 161 137 0.93
2023/24 174 166 132 0.95
2024/25 170 164 128 0.96
2025/26 172 211 135 1.23
2026/27 167 128 108 0.77

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

128

896 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

108 of 128

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 167 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 137374.

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

890

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

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 The Totteridge Academy 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 Totteridge Academy reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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 Totteridge Academy 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 2011/12 884 places 805 on roll 2012/13 884 places 767 on roll 2013/14 1,146 places 744 on roll 2014/15 1,146 places 581 on roll 2015/16 1,146 places 556 on roll 2016/17 1,146 places 489 on roll 2017/18 1,146 places 497 on roll 2018/19 1,146 places 528 on roll 2020/21 1,146 places 683 on roll 2021/22 1,146 places 804 on roll 2022/23 1,146 places 896 on roll 2023/24 1,146 places 940 on roll 2024/25 1,146 places 1,000 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnet

Postcode N20 8AZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144502).

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.