School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at West Hatch High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 115 families who named West Hatch High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 248 and 328 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

328 first preferences for 248 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at West Hatch High School

There is no published appeal success rate for West Hatch High 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

West Hatch High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 2 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 West Hatch High 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 1.07 per place 191 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 177 first choices 183 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 189 first choices 187 places 2018/19 1.08 per place 265 first choices 245 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 253 first choices 244 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 266 first choices 246 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 215 first choices 247 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 239 first choices 243 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 295 first choices 242 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 257 first choices 242 places 2025/26 0.8 per place 197 first choices 246 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 328 first choices 248 places
First preferences per place at West Hatch High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 328 first preferences for 248 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at West Hatch High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 191 151 1.07
2016/17 183 177 154 0.97
2017/18 187 189 155 1.01
2018/19 245 265 210 1.08
2019/20 244 253 204 1.04
2020/21 246 266 213 1.08
2021/22 247 215 207 0.87
2022/23 243 239 207 0.98
2023/24 242 295 210 1.22
2024/25 242 257 193 1.06
2025/26 246 197 187 0.8
2026/27 248 328 213 1.32

Places offered

248

in 2026/27

Named first choice

328

784 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.9%

213 of 328

Offers to families outside the council

56%

138 of 248 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

1,032

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,238

120% of capacity

Over its capacity by

206

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

348

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 West Hatch High 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 West Hatch High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at West Hatch High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,223 places 1,243 on roll 2012/13 1,223 places 1,228 on roll 2013/14 1,223 places 1,242 on roll 2014/15 1,223 places 1,243 on roll 2015/16 1,223 places 1,185 on roll 2016/17 1,223 places 1,164 on roll 2017/18 1,223 places 1,174 on roll 2018/19 1,283 places 1,220 on roll 2020/21 1,593 places 1,351 on roll 2021/22 1,593 places 1,397 on roll 2022/23 1,593 places 1,432 on roll 2023/24 1,593 places 1,499 on roll 2024/25 1,380 places 1,558 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 IG7 5BT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136758).

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.