School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Marshalls Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Marshalls Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 220 put it first and 200 of them were offered one.

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

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

220 first preferences for 239 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Marshalls Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Marshalls Park Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Havering 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 Havering, 7.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 404 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 Havering.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Havering 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

Marshalls Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 1 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 Marshalls Park Academy, 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 187 first choices 172 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 191 first choices 181 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 183 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 178 first choices 232 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 191 first choices 237 places 2020/21 0.7 per place 157 first choices 224 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 221 first choices 238 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 208 first choices 237 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 212 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 205 first choices 236 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 194 first choices 236 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 220 first choices 239 places
First preferences per place at Marshalls Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 239 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Marshalls Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 172 187 139 1.09
2016/17 181 191 165 1.06
2017/18 179 183 143 1.02
2018/19 232 178 178 0.77
2019/20 237 191 181 0.81
2020/21 224 157 157 0.7
2021/22 238 221 207 0.93
2022/23 237 208 202 0.88
2023/24 236 212 196 0.9
2024/25 236 205 172 0.87
2025/26 236 194 184 0.82
2026/27 239 220 200 0.92

Places offered

239

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

627 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.9%

200 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 239 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 102345.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,175

97.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

25

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 Marshalls Park Academy 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 Marshalls Park Academy reported 25 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.9% 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 Marshalls Park Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 788 places 804 on roll 2010/11 864 places 818 on roll 2011/12 864 places 835 on roll 2012/13 860 places 851 on roll 2013/14 860 places 862 on roll 2014/15 860 places 848 on roll 2015/16 860 places 839 on roll 2016/17 900 places 840 on roll 2017/18 900 places 858 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 932 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,054 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,131 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,174 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,189 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,175 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
Havering

Postcode RM1 4EH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144094).

Other contested secondary schools in Havering

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.