School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ark Elvin Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Ark Elvin Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 160 put it first and 141 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.

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

160 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ark Elvin Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ark Elvin 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 Elvin Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Ark Elvin 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 0.3 per place 49 first choices 166 places 2016/17 0.2 per place 42 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.23 per place 31 first choices 137 places 2018/19 0.19 per place 44 first choices 230 places 2019/20 0.28 per place 72 first choices 257 places 2020/21 0.34 per place 75 first choices 223 places 2021/22 0.4 per place 87 first choices 217 places 2022/23 0.54 per place 128 first choices 238 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 151 first choices 205 places 2024/25 0.72 per place 152 first choices 210 places 2025/26 0.7 per place 148 first choices 210 places 2026/27 0.78 per place 160 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Ark Elvin Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 160 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ark Elvin Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 166 49 49 0.3
2016/17 208 42 42 0.2
2017/18 137 31 31 0.23
2018/19 230 44 44 0.19
2019/20 257 72 72 0.28
2020/21 223 75 75 0.34
2021/22 217 87 87 0.4
2022/23 238 128 128 0.54
2023/24 205 151 148 0.74
2024/25 210 152 147 0.72
2025/26 210 148 144 0.7
2026/27 205 160 141 0.78

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

160

603 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.1%

141 of 160

Offers to families outside the council

6%

12 of 205 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

1,266

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,049

82.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

217

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Elvin 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 Elvin Academy reported 217 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.9% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ark Elvin Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,473 places 989 on roll 2015/16 1,750 places 979 on roll 2016/17 1,750 places 876 on roll 2017/18 1,750 places 876 on roll 2018/19 1,750 places 940 on roll 2020/21 1,750 places 1,060 on roll 2021/22 1,750 places 1,192 on roll 2022/23 1,750 places 1,276 on roll 2023/24 1,750 places 1,304 on roll 2024/25 1,666 places 1,284 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 7DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141019).

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.