School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Camden School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 143 families who named The Camden School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 116 and 254 put it first.

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

2.19

first choices for every place available

254 first preferences for 116 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Camden School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for The Camden School for Girls, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Camden 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 Camden, 16.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 78 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 Camden.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Camden 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

The Camden School for Girls 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 The Camden School for Girls, 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 1.74 per place 174 first choices 100 places 2016/17 1.88 per place 224 first choices 119 places 2017/18 1.95 per place 228 first choices 117 places 2018/19 1.83 per place 220 first choices 120 places 2019/20 2.14 per place 252 first choices 118 places 2020/21 2.13 per place 249 first choices 117 places 2021/22 2.02 per place 234 first choices 116 places 2022/23 1.99 per place 235 first choices 118 places 2023/24 1.95 per place 232 first choices 119 places 2024/25 1.92 per place 228 first choices 119 places 2025/26 1.78 per place 208 first choices 117 places 2026/27 2.19 per place 254 first choices 116 places
First preferences per place at The Camden School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 254 first preferences for 116 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Camden School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 100 174 89 1.74
2016/17 119 224 110 1.88
2017/18 117 228 113 1.95
2018/19 120 220 111 1.83
2019/20 118 252 114 2.14
2020/21 117 249 113 2.13
2021/22 116 234 103 2.02
2022/23 118 235 104 1.99
2023/24 119 232 114 1.95
2024/25 119 228 107 1.92
2025/26 117 208 105 1.78
2026/27 116 254 111 2.19

Places offered

116

in 2026/27

Named first choice

254

597 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

43.7%

111 of 254

Offers to families outside the council

30%

35 of 116 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

697

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

599

85.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

98

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

437

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 The Camden School for Girls 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 The Camden School for Girls reported 98 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.9% 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 The Camden School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 982 places 1,012 on roll 2010/11 1,063 places 1,006 on roll 2011/12 1,063 places 1,004 on roll 2012/13 1,063 places 1,011 on roll 2013/14 1,063 places 1,012 on roll 2014/15 1,063 places 1,006 on roll 2015/16 1,063 places 1,003 on roll 2016/17 1,073 places 1,010 on roll 2017/18 1,134 places 1,026 on roll 2018/19 1,134 places 1,022 on roll 2020/21 1,134 places 1,043 on roll 2021/22 1,134 places 1,067 on roll 2022/23 1,134 places 1,042 on roll 2023/24 1,134 places 1,063 on roll 2024/25 1,134 places 1,071 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Camden

Postcode NW5 2DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100054).

Other contested secondary schools in Camden

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.