School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at JFS?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 123 families who named JFS as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 338 and 415 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

415 first preferences for 338 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at JFS

There is no published appeal success rate for JFS, 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

JFS turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 JFS, 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 1.39 per place 426 first choices 307 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 361 first choices 289 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 327 first choices 295 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 315 first choices 327 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 336 first choices 347 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 352 first choices 365 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 298 first choices 341 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 244 first choices 322 places 2023/24 0.72 per place 244 first choices 340 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 315 first choices 375 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 398 first choices 340 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 415 first choices 338 places
First preferences per place at JFS. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 415 first preferences for 338 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at JFS, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 307 426 258 1.39
2016/17 289 361 230 1.25
2017/18 295 327 231 1.11
2018/19 327 315 237 0.96
2019/20 347 336 256 0.97
2020/21 365 352 277 0.96
2021/22 341 298 241 0.87
2022/23 322 244 216 0.76
2023/24 340 244 219 0.72
2024/25 375 315 284 0.84
2025/26 340 398 287 1.17
2026/27 338 415 292 1.23

Places offered

338

in 2026/27

Named first choice

415

774 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.4%

292 of 415

Offers to families outside the council

95%

320 of 338 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

1,813

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,496

82.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

317

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

510

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 JFS 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 JFS reported 317 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.5% 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 JFS from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,200 2,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 2,205 places 2,061 on roll 2010/11 2,205 places 2,090 on roll 2011/12 2,040 places 2,027 on roll 2012/13 2,040 places 2,029 on roll 2013/14 2,040 places 2,051 on roll 2014/15 2,165 places 2,063 on roll 2015/16 2,165 places 2,008 on roll 2016/17 2,165 places 1,932 on roll 2017/18 2,165 places 1,958 on roll 2018/19 2,165 places 1,991 on roll 2020/21 2,165 places 2,051 on roll 2021/22 2,165 places 1,959 on roll 2022/23 2,165 places 1,888 on roll 2023/24 2,165 places 1,891 on roll 2024/25 2,323 places 2,035 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. JFS has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming JFS. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2771

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Brent

Postcode HA3 9TE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 133724).

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.