School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Highgate Wood Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Highgate Wood Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: 205 put it first and 159 of them were offered one.

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

46

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

205 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Highgate Wood Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for Highgate Wood Secondary 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 Haringey 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 Haringey, 4.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 12 of 250 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 Haringey.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Haringey 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

Highgate Wood Secondary School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 6 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 Highgate Wood Secondary 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 247 first choices 230 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 214 first choices 240 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 228 first choices 242 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 267 first choices 265 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 249 first choices 265 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 256 first choices 260 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 259 first choices 239 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 256 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 267 first choices 230 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 235 first choices 233 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 215 first choices 229 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 205 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Highgate Wood Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 205 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Highgate Wood Secondary School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 230 247 166 1.07
2016/17 240 214 190 0.89
2017/18 242 228 156 0.94
2018/19 265 267 176 1.01
2019/20 265 249 182 0.94
2020/21 260 256 176 0.98
2021/22 239 259 159 1.08
2022/23 235 256 153 1.09
2023/24 230 267 160 1.16
2024/25 233 235 164 1.01
2025/26 229 215 161 0.94
2026/27 232 205 159 0.88

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

205

879 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.6%

159 of 205

Offers to families outside the council

19%

45 of 232 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

1,319

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,239

93.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

80

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 Highgate Wood Secondary 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 Highgate Wood Secondary School reported 80 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.9% 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 Highgate Wood Secondary School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,465 places 1,373 on roll 2010/11 1,465 places 1,409 on roll 2011/12 1,465 places 1,401 on roll 2012/13 1,465 places 1,423 on roll 2013/14 1,465 places 1,444 on roll 2014/15 1,465 places 1,437 on roll 2015/16 1,465 places 1,397 on roll 2016/17 1,465 places 1,422 on roll 2017/18 1,465 places 1,416 on roll 2018/19 1,639 places 1,430 on roll 2020/21 1,639 places 1,558 on roll 2021/22 1,639 places 1,582 on roll 2022/23 1,639 places 1,583 on roll 2023/24 1,639 places 1,555 on roll 2024/25 1,639 places 1,538 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
Haringey

Postcode N8 8RN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102154).

Other contested secondary schools in Haringey

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.