School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kingsmead School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Kingsmead School as their first choice did not get a place: 232 put it first and 213 of them were offered one.

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

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

232 first preferences for 279 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kingsmead School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kingsmead 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 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

Kingsmead School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 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 Kingsmead 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 1.15 per place 275 first choices 240 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 227 first choices 242 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 251 first choices 242 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 262 first choices 251 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 306 first choices 270 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 322 first choices 269 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 271 first choices 252 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 296 first choices 251 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 289 first choices 250 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 264 first choices 252 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 262 first choices 252 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 232 first choices 279 places
First preferences per place at Kingsmead School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 232 first preferences for 279 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kingsmead School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 275 211 1.15
2016/17 242 227 178 0.94
2017/18 242 251 179 1.04
2018/19 251 262 180 1.04
2019/20 270 306 217 1.13
2020/21 269 322 224 1.2
2021/22 252 271 192 1.08
2022/23 251 296 214 1.18
2023/24 250 289 212 1.16
2024/25 252 264 208 1.05
2025/26 252 262 216 1.04
2026/27 279 232 213 0.83

Places offered

279

in 2026/27

Named first choice

232

846 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.8%

213 of 232

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 279 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

1,253

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,265

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

12

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

212

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 Kingsmead 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 Kingsmead School 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kingsmead School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,470 places 1,431 on roll 2011/12 1,470 places 1,430 on roll 2012/13 1,470 places 1,446 on roll 2013/14 1,470 places 1,457 on roll 2014/15 1,465 places 1,467 on roll 2015/16 1,465 places 1,432 on roll 2016/17 1,465 places 1,415 on roll 2017/18 1,465 places 1,415 on roll 2018/19 1,465 places 1,419 on roll 2020/21 1,465 places 1,516 on roll 2021/22 1,465 places 1,514 on roll 2022/23 1,465 places 1,526 on roll 2023/24 1,465 places 1,539 on roll 2024/25 1,465 places 1,484 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
Enfield

Postcode EN1 1YQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136327).

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.