School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Winchmore School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 124 families who named Winchmore School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 314 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

314 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Winchmore School

There is no published appeal success rate for Winchmore 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

Winchmore School 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 Winchmore 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 1.19 per place 284 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.18 per place 282 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 292 first choices 238 places 2018/19 1.27 per place 298 first choices 234 places 2019/20 1.22 per place 293 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 310 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 268 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 293 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.54 per place 367 first choices 238 places 2024/25 1.58 per place 380 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.55 per place 372 first choices 240 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 314 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Winchmore School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 314 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Winchmore School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 284 183 1.19
2016/17 238 282 171 1.18
2017/18 238 292 170 1.23
2018/19 234 298 177 1.27
2019/20 240 293 169 1.22
2020/21 240 310 190 1.29
2021/22 240 268 192 1.12
2022/23 240 293 192 1.22
2023/24 238 367 201 1.54
2024/25 240 380 206 1.58
2025/26 240 372 218 1.55
2026/27 240 314 190 1.31

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

314

1,101 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.5%

190 of 314

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 240 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

1,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,215

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

450

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 Winchmore 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 Winchmore School reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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 Winchmore School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,433 places 1,445 on roll 2010/11 1,433 places 1,445 on roll 2011/12 1,433 places 1,438 on roll 2012/13 1,433 places 1,454 on roll 2013/14 1,460 places 1,459 on roll 2014/15 1,460 places 1,531 on roll 2015/16 1,680 places 1,561 on roll 2016/17 1,680 places 1,568 on roll 2017/18 1,680 places 1,620 on roll 2018/19 1,680 places 1,617 on roll 2020/21 1,680 places 1,670 on roll 2021/22 1,680 places 1,637 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,664 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,729 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,774 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Enfield

Postcode N21 3HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102045).

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.