School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Honywood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Honywood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 192 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

192 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Honywood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Honywood 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

Honywood School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Honywood 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 0.98 per place 204 first choices 208 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 151 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 151 first choices 162 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 157 first choices 167 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 156 first choices 173 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 103 first choices 114 places 2021/22 0.75 per place 97 first choices 129 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 125 first choices 149 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 114 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 188 first choices 183 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 191 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 192 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Honywood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Honywood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 204 185 0.98
2016/17 180 151 151 0.84
2017/18 162 151 151 0.93
2018/19 167 157 157 0.94
2019/20 173 156 156 0.9
2020/21 114 103 103 0.9
2021/22 129 97 97 0.75
2022/23 149 125 125 0.84
2023/24 150 114 114 0.76
2024/25 183 188 170 1.03
2025/26 175 191 162 1.09
2026/27 179 192 165 1.07

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

565 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.9%

165 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 179 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

1,052

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

812

77.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

240

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 Honywood 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 Honywood School reported 240 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 77.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Honywood School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 980 places 1,012 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,032 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,011 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 989 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 968 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 808 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 761 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 808 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 796 on roll 2024/25 1,052 places 812 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
Essex

Postcode CO6 1PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136729).

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.