School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ark Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 80 families who named Ark Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 131 and 173 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

173 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ark Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ark 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 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

Ark Academy 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 Ark Academy, 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 2.5 per place 290 first choices 116 places 2016/17 1.55 per place 271 first choices 175 places 2017/18 1.39 per place 240 first choices 173 places 2018/19 1.56 per place 220 first choices 141 places 2019/20 1.64 per place 193 first choices 118 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 137 first choices 128 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 148 first choices 140 places 2022/23 1.31 per place 174 first choices 133 places 2023/24 1.61 per place 206 first choices 128 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 165 first choices 128 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 134 first choices 125 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 173 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at Ark Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 173 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ark Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 290 91 2.5
2016/17 175 271 143 1.55
2017/18 173 240 129 1.39
2018/19 141 220 86 1.56
2019/20 118 193 81 1.64
2020/21 128 137 76 1.07
2021/22 140 148 96 1.06
2022/23 133 174 93 1.31
2023/24 128 206 98 1.61
2024/25 128 165 89 1.29
2025/26 125 134 81 1.07
2026/27 131 173 93 1.32

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

173

790 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

53.8%

93 of 173

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 131 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

1,484

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,289

86.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

195

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Ark 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 Ark Academy reported 195 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ark Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,630 places 113 on roll 2010/11 1,630 places 400 on roll 2011/12 1,528 places 593 on roll 2012/13 1,528 places 826 on roll 2013/14 1,650 places 1,061 on roll 2014/15 1,650 places 1,286 on roll 2015/16 1,680 places 1,400 on roll 2016/17 1,680 places 1,466 on roll 2017/18 1,570 places 1,487 on roll 2018/19 1,570 places 1,506 on roll 2020/21 1,570 places 1,548 on roll 2021/22 1,570 places 1,584 on roll 2022/23 1,570 places 1,591 on roll 2023/24 1,570 places 1,586 on roll 2024/25 1,734 places 1,591 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
Brent

Postcode HA9 9JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135600).

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.