School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Southgate School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Southgate School as their first choice did not get a place: 105 put it first and 95 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.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

105 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Southgate School

There is no published appeal success rate for Southgate 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

Southgate School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Southgate 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 0.7 per place 174 first choices 247 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 221 first choices 249 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 215 first choices 250 places 2018/19 1 per place 246 first choices 246 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 224 first choices 249 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 218 first choices 249 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 155 first choices 249 places 2022/23 0.6 per place 148 first choices 248 places 2023/24 0.61 per place 145 first choices 237 places 2024/25 0.58 per place 139 first choices 240 places 2025/26 0.43 per place 102 first choices 239 places 2026/27 0.44 per place 105 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Southgate School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 105 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Southgate School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 247 174 138 0.7
2016/17 249 221 164 0.89
2017/18 250 215 144 0.86
2018/19 246 246 162 1
2019/20 249 224 144 0.9
2020/21 249 218 172 0.88
2021/22 249 155 137 0.62
2022/23 248 148 132 0.6
2023/24 237 145 129 0.61
2024/25 240 139 125 0.58
2025/26 239 102 95 0.43
2026/27 240 105 95 0.44

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

105

1,153 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.5%

95 of 105

Offers to families outside the council

10%

25 of 240 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 102047.

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

1,269

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,155

91% of capacity

Unfilled places

114

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

273

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 Southgate 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 Southgate School reported 114 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91% 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 Southgate School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,531 places 1,517 on roll 2010/11 1,531 places 1,541 on roll 2011/12 1,531 places 1,543 on roll 2012/13 1,531 places 1,524 on roll 2013/14 1,531 places 1,553 on roll 2014/15 1,531 places 1,498 on roll 2015/16 1,531 places 1,519 on roll 2016/17 1,531 places 1,564 on roll 2017/18 1,531 places 1,539 on roll 2018/19 1,542 places 1,508 on roll 2020/21 1,542 places 1,505 on roll 2021/22 1,542 places 1,499 on roll 2022/23 1,542 places 1,450 on roll 2023/24 1,542 places 1,441 on roll 2024/25 1,542 places 1,397 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 EN4 0BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142727).

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.