School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ark John Keats Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 64 families who named Ark John Keats Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 238 put it first.

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

1.33

first choices for every place available

238 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ark John Keats Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ark John Keats 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 Enfield 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 Enfield, 12.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 48 of 393 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 Enfield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Enfield 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 John Keats Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Ark John Keats Academy, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.76 per place 119 first choices 157 places 2016/17 1.61 per place 285 first choices 177 places 2017/18 2.01 per place 361 first choices 180 places 2018/19 2.64 per place 464 first choices 176 places 2019/20 2.88 per place 519 first choices 180 places 2020/21 2.18 per place 384 first choices 176 places 2021/22 2.81 per place 503 first choices 179 places 2022/23 2.26 per place 378 first choices 167 places 2023/24 2.08 per place 357 first choices 172 places 2024/25 1.73 per place 288 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.54 per place 258 first choices 168 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 238 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Ark John Keats Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ark John Keats Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 157 119 119 0.76
2016/17 177 285 166 1.61
2017/18 180 361 168 2.01
2018/19 176 464 165 2.64
2019/20 180 519 174 2.88
2020/21 176 384 128 2.18
2021/22 179 503 167 2.81
2022/23 167 378 161 2.26
2023/24 172 357 164 2.08
2024/25 166 288 157 1.73
2025/26 168 258 159 1.54
2026/27 179 238 174 1.33

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

602 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.1%

174 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 178 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,531

113.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

181

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

480

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 John Keats 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 John Keats Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ark John Keats Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,800 places 42 on roll 2014/15 1,800 places 257 on roll 2015/16 1,800 places 531 on roll 2016/17 1,800 places 804 on roll 2017/18 1,800 places 1,086 on roll 2018/19 1,830 places 1,362 on roll 2020/21 1,830 places 1,686 on roll 2021/22 1,830 places 1,732 on roll 2022/23 1,830 places 1,746 on roll 2023/24 1,830 places 1,706 on roll 2024/25 1,830 places 1,694 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
Enfield

Postcode EN3 5PA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139815).

Other contested secondary schools in Enfield

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.