School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at North Brent School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 61 families who named North Brent School as their first choice did not get a place: 208 put it first and 147 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Brent actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

61

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

208 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at North Brent School

There is no published appeal success rate for North Brent 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

North Brent School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 6 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 4 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 North Brent School, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 1.17 per place 70 first choices 60 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 63 first choices 70 places 2023/24 1.98 per place 125 first choices 63 places 2024/25 0.64 per place 128 first choices 200 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 194 first choices 230 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 208 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at North Brent School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 208 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at North Brent School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 60 70 16 1.17
2022/23 70 63 28 0.9
2023/24 63 125 24 1.98
2024/25 200 128 96 0.64
2025/26 230 194 174 0.84
2026/27 210 208 147 0.99

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

208

557 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.7%

147 of 208

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 210 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

1,268

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

307

24.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

961

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 North Brent 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 North Brent School reported 961 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 24.2% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at North Brent School from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 900 places 113 on roll 2021/22 900 places 177 on roll 2022/23 900 places 25 on roll 2023/24 900 places 98 on roll 2024/25 1,268 places 307 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Brent

Postcode NW10 2UF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143718).

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.