School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wren Academy Finchley?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 111 families who named Wren Academy Finchley as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 113 and 215 put it first.

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

1.90

first choices for every place available

215 first preferences for 113 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wren Academy Finchley

There is no published appeal success rate for Wren Academy Finchley, 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

Wren Academy Finchley 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 Wren Academy Finchley, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.83 per place 314 first choices 172 places 2016/17 1.6 per place 284 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.82 per place 327 first choices 180 places 2018/19 2.12 per place 377 first choices 178 places 2019/20 2.08 per place 372 first choices 179 places 2020/21 2.17 per place 386 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.78 per place 311 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.99 per place 351 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.77 per place 309 first choices 175 places 2024/25 1.63 per place 284 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.72 per place 297 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.9 per place 215 first choices 113 places
First preferences per place at Wren Academy Finchley. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 215 first preferences for 113 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wren Academy Finchley, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 172 314 146 1.83
2016/17 178 284 144 1.6
2017/18 180 327 155 1.82
2018/19 178 377 158 2.12
2019/20 179 372 158 2.08
2020/21 178 386 166 2.17
2021/22 175 311 156 1.78
2022/23 176 351 167 1.99
2023/24 175 309 158 1.77
2024/25 174 284 163 1.63
2025/26 173 297 159 1.72
2026/27 113 215 104 1.9

Places offered

113

in 2026/27

Named first choice

215

1,089 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.4%

104 of 215

Offers to families outside the council

4%

5 of 113 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

1,300

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,338

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Wren Academy Finchley 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 Wren Academy Finchley 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wren Academy Finchley from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,060 places 334 on roll 2010/11 1,060 places 515 on roll 2011/12 900 places 706 on roll 2012/13 900 places 881 on roll 2013/14 900 places 985 on roll 2014/15 1,180 places 1,063 on roll 2015/16 1,536 places 1,152 on roll 2016/17 1,600 places 1,288 on roll 2017/18 1,600 places 1,359 on roll 2018/19 1,600 places 1,433 on roll 2020/21 1,600 places 1,562 on roll 2021/22 1,600 places 1,644 on roll 2022/23 1,600 places 1,624 on roll 2023/24 1,600 places 1,621 on roll 2024/25 1,600 places 1,640 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnet

Postcode N12 9HB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135507).

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.