School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alperton Community School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Alperton Community School as their first choice did not get a place: 287 put it first and 266 of them were offered one.

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

21

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

287 first preferences for 321 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alperton Community School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alperton Community 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 Brent 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 Brent, 4.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 17 of 382 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 Brent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Brent 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

Alperton Community School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Alperton Community 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 0.67 per place 145 first choices 218 places 2016/17 0.67 per place 145 first choices 216 places 2017/18 0.68 per place 181 first choices 265 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 236 first choices 321 places 2019/20 0.68 per place 219 first choices 321 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 262 first choices 322 places 2021/22 0.7 per place 224 first choices 318 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 281 first choices 322 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 274 first choices 322 places 2024/25 0.78 per place 253 first choices 324 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 314 first choices 322 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 287 first choices 321 places
First preferences per place at Alperton Community School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 287 first preferences for 321 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alperton Community School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 218 145 136 0.67
2016/17 216 145 138 0.67
2017/18 265 181 177 0.68
2018/19 321 236 206 0.74
2019/20 321 219 198 0.68
2020/21 322 262 225 0.81
2021/22 318 224 213 0.7
2022/23 322 281 252 0.87
2023/24 322 274 249 0.85
2024/25 324 253 243 0.78
2025/26 322 314 276 0.98
2026/27 321 287 266 0.89

Places offered

321

in 2026/27

Named first choice

287

694 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.7%

266 of 287

Offers to families outside the council

15%

49 of 321 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

1,620

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,617

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Alperton Community 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 Alperton Community School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Alperton Community School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,408 places 1,398 on roll 2013/14 1,476 places 1,421 on roll 2014/15 1,408 places 1,377 on roll 2015/16 1,476 places 1,361 on roll 2016/17 1,476 places 1,400 on roll 2017/18 1,700 places 1,423 on roll 2018/19 1,970 places 1,535 on roll 2020/21 1,970 places 1,739 on roll 2021/22 1,970 places 1,822 on roll 2022/23 1,970 places 1,899 on roll 2023/24 1,970 places 1,939 on roll 2024/25 1,970 places 1,920 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
Brent

Postcode HA0 4JE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138610).

Other contested secondary schools in Brent

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.