School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Claremont High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 114 families who named Claremont High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 260 and 341 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

341 first preferences for 260 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Claremont High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Claremont High 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

Claremont High School 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 Claremont High 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 1.13 per place 277 first choices 246 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 268 first choices 266 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 302 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 336 first choices 261 places 2019/20 1.33 per place 360 first choices 270 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 324 first choices 263 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 313 first choices 266 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 290 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 321 first choices 266 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 312 first choices 260 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 306 first choices 269 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 341 first choices 260 places
First preferences per place at Claremont High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 341 first preferences for 260 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Claremont High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 246 277 196 1.13
2016/17 266 268 190 1.01
2017/18 268 302 208 1.13
2018/19 261 336 209 1.29
2019/20 270 360 221 1.33
2020/21 263 324 207 1.23
2021/22 266 313 201 1.18
2022/23 264 290 224 1.1
2023/24 266 321 226 1.21
2024/25 260 312 198 1.2
2025/26 269 306 211 1.14
2026/27 260 341 227 1.31

Places offered

260

in 2026/27

Named first choice

341

973 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.6%

227 of 341

Offers to families outside the council

27%

71 of 260 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

1,749

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,397

79.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

352

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

340

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 Claremont High 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 Claremont High School reported 352 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.9% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Claremont High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,440 places 1,510 on roll 2011/12 1,546 places 1,508 on roll 2012/13 1,821 places 1,591 on roll 2013/14 1,821 places 1,591 on roll 2014/15 1,821 places 1,535 on roll 2015/16 1,600 places 1,550 on roll 2016/17 1,600 places 1,541 on roll 2017/18 1,690 places 1,562 on roll 2018/19 1,690 places 1,595 on roll 2020/21 1,690 places 1,642 on roll 2021/22 1,690 places 1,609 on roll 2022/23 1,690 places 1,600 on roll 2023/24 1,690 places 1,620 on roll 2024/25 2,089 places 1,642 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 HA3 0UH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136656).

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.