School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Martin's School Brentwood?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named St Martin's School Brentwood as their first choice did not get a place: 289 put it first and 257 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.

32

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

289 first preferences for 316 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Martin's School Brentwood

There is no published appeal success rate for St Martin's School Brentwood, 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

St Martin's School Brentwood turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 9 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Martin's School Brentwood, 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 1.09 per place 298 first choices 273 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 253 first choices 272 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 268 first choices 279 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 283 first choices 290 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 282 first choices 290 places 2020/21 0.66 per place 190 first choices 290 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 225 first choices 286 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 283 first choices 323 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 287 first choices 292 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 246 first choices 291 places 2025/26 1 per place 287 first choices 287 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 289 first choices 316 places
First preferences per place at St Martin's School Brentwood. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 289 first preferences for 316 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Martin's School Brentwood, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 273 298 230 1.09
2016/17 272 253 226 0.93
2017/18 279 268 238 0.96
2018/19 290 283 246 0.98
2019/20 290 282 218 0.97
2020/21 290 190 183 0.66
2021/22 286 225 197 0.79
2022/23 323 283 250 0.88
2023/24 292 287 209 0.98
2024/25 291 246 230 0.85
2025/26 287 287 236 1
2026/27 316 289 257 0.91

Places offered

316

in 2026/27

Named first choice

289

1,178 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.9%

257 of 289

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 316 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Martin's School Brentwood published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for St Martin's School Brentwood, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after and previously looked after children
2 A ‘looked after child’ is one, who is (a) in the care of a Local Authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in the exercise of its social services functions, in England. A ‘previously looked after child’ is one who was looked after in England, but ceased to be so because they were adopted, or became subject to a child arrangements or special guardianship order, as well as a child who appears to have been in state care outside of England (i.e. in the care of, or accommodated by, a public authority, religious organisation or any other provider whose sole/main purpose is to benefit society), but ceased to be so as a result of being adopted. ii. […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Children with a sibling at St. Martin’s School Brentwood in Year 7 to Year 11 at the time of application and admission i. The sibling must be on the roll in Years 7 to 11 at SMS at the time of application and will still be on the roll in Years 7 to 11 at the time of the applicant child's admission. For the avoidance of doubt, siblings who are in Year 12 or 13 at the time of application, or who will be in Year 12 at the time of admission (having transferred from Year 11) will not meet the definition of a 'sibling' for the purpose of this Policy. ii. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Children who attend Hogarth Primary School, Kelvedon Hatch Community Primary School or Larchwood Primary School at the time of application i. The applicant child must be on the roll of Hogarth Primary School, Kelvedon Hatch Community Primary School or Larchwood Primary School at the time of application for a place at SMS.
5 Children living within the Priority Admission Area i. The applicant child's home address (as defined in this Policy) must be located within the Priority Admission Area for SMS as shown in the Priority Admission Area Map available via the SMS website: https://www.st- martins.essex.sch.uk/admissions/priority-admissions-area-map/.
6 Children applying for a place in Year 7 who demonstrate an aptitude in sport or music i. Up to 29 places (10% of the PAN) for Year 7 will be allocated to children who qualified for consideration of an aptitude place, as set out above at section 4.
7 Children of staff at St. Martin's School Brentwood i. The staff member may be full or part time, and teaching or non-teaching staff. They must spend more than 50% of their working week during term time based at SMS. For the avoidance of doubt, it is not possible to have priority for more than one DET School. ii. The staff member must have been (a) employed at SMS for two or more years at the time of application on a permanent contract, or two or more consecutive fixed term one-year contracts, and/or (b) recruited to fill a vacant post at SMS for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. iii. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

St Martin's School Brentwood's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,460

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,402

96% of capacity

Unfilled places

58

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

501

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 Martin's School Brentwood 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 Martin's School Brentwood reported 58 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Martin's School Brentwood from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,722 places 1,752 on roll 2012/13 1,722 places 1,734 on roll 2013/14 1,722 places 1,764 on roll 2014/15 1,722 places 1,785 on roll 2015/16 1,722 places 1,770 on roll 2016/17 1,722 places 1,766 on roll 2017/18 1,722 places 1,743 on roll 2018/19 1,805 places 1,778 on roll 2020/21 1,805 places 1,803 on roll 2021/22 1,805 places 1,807 on roll 2022/23 1,805 places 1,860 on roll 2023/24 1,805 places 1,756 on roll 2024/25 1,961 places 1,693 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 CM13 2HG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136875).

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.