School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Ignatius College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named St Ignatius College as their first choice did not get a place: 156 put it first and 153 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.

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

156 first preferences for 185 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Ignatius College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Ignatius College, 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

St Ignatius College turned first-choice families away in 2 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 St Ignatius College, 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 0.78 per place 129 first choices 166 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 158 first choices 184 places 2017/18 0.68 per place 125 first choices 185 places 2018/19 0.81 per place 150 first choices 186 places 2019/20 0.76 per place 141 first choices 186 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 140 first choices 184 places 2021/22 0.59 per place 107 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.68 per place 122 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 122 first choices 160 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 127 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.78 per place 125 first choices 161 places 2026/27 0.84 per place 156 first choices 185 places
First preferences per place at St Ignatius College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 156 first preferences for 185 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Ignatius College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 166 129 129 0.78
2016/17 184 158 150 0.86
2017/18 185 125 125 0.68
2018/19 186 150 137 0.81
2019/20 186 141 126 0.76
2020/21 184 140 134 0.76
2021/22 180 107 107 0.59
2022/23 180 122 122 0.68
2023/24 160 122 122 0.76
2024/25 150 127 114 0.85
2025/26 161 125 125 0.78
2026/27 185 156 153 0.84

Places offered

185

in 2026/27

Named first choice

156

386 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.1%

153 of 156

Offers to families outside the council

9%

17 of 185 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

790

87.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

110

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

309

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 St Ignatius College 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 St Ignatius College reported 110 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.8% 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 St Ignatius College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,229 places 1,110 on roll 2010/11 1,229 places 1,121 on roll 2011/12 1,229 places 1,105 on roll 2012/13 1,229 places 1,088 on roll 2013/14 1,229 places 1,072 on roll 2014/15 1,229 places 1,057 on roll 2015/16 1,146 places 1,057 on roll 2016/17 1,146 places 1,011 on roll 2017/18 1,146 places 986 on roll 2018/19 1,229 places 1,006 on roll 2020/21 1,229 places 1,042 on roll 2021/22 1,229 places 1,068 on roll 2022/23 1,209 places 1,103 on roll 2023/24 1,209 places 1,057 on roll 2024/25 1,209 places 991 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Enfield

Postcode EN1 4NP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102058).

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.