School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Forest Hall School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Forest Hall School as their first choice did not get a place: 99 put it first and 87 of them were offered one.

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

12

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

99 first preferences for 116 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Forest Hall School

There is no published appeal success rate for Forest Hall 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 Essex 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 Essex, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 249 of 1,651 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 Essex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Essex 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

Forest Hall School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Forest Hall 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 0.55 per place 45 first choices 82 places 2016/17 0.51 per place 63 first choices 124 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 86 first choices 107 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 81 first choices 110 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 92 first choices 104 places 2020/21 0.84 per place 75 first choices 89 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 71 first choices 96 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 83 first choices 115 places 2023/24 0.81 per place 71 first choices 88 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 71 first choices 79 places 2025/26 0.63 per place 62 first choices 99 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 99 first choices 116 places
First preferences per place at Forest Hall School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 99 first preferences for 116 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Forest Hall 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 82 45 45 0.55
2016/17 124 63 63 0.51
2017/18 107 86 86 0.8
2018/19 110 81 81 0.74
2019/20 104 92 91 0.88
2020/21 89 75 75 0.84
2021/22 96 71 71 0.74
2022/23 115 83 83 0.72
2023/24 88 71 71 0.81
2024/25 79 71 71 0.9
2025/26 99 62 61 0.63
2026/27 116 99 87 0.85

Places offered

116

in 2026/27

Named first choice

99

329 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.9%

87 of 99

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 116 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 115222.

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

660

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

481

72.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

179

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Forest Hall 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 Forest Hall School reported 179 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 72.9% 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 Forest Hall School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 666 places 461 on roll 2010/11 666 places 418 on roll 2011/12 666 places 373 on roll 2012/13 666 places 355 on roll 2013/14 666 places 339 on roll 2014/15 660 places 326 on roll 2015/16 660 places 346 on roll 2016/17 660 places 422 on roll 2017/18 660 places 460 on roll 2018/19 660 places 475 on roll 2020/21 660 places 480 on roll 2021/22 660 places 467 on roll 2022/23 660 places 493 on roll 2023/24 660 places 496 on roll 2024/25 660 places 481 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode CM24 8TZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141328).

Other contested secondary schools in Essex

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.