School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Coopers' Company and Coborn School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 186 families who named The Coopers' Company and Coborn School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 383 put it first.

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

1.87

first choices for every place available

383 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Coopers' Company and Coborn School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Coopers' Company and Coborn 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 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

The Coopers' Company and Coborn School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Coopers' Company and Coborn 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 1.9 per place 359 first choices 189 places 2016/17 1.81 per place 344 first choices 190 places 2017/18 1.92 per place 359 first choices 187 places 2018/19 1.86 per place 372 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.55 per place 322 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.76 per place 362 first choices 206 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 323 first choices 207 places 2022/23 1.67 per place 345 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.75 per place 357 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1.72 per place 349 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.77 per place 363 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.87 per place 383 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at The Coopers' Company and Coborn School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 383 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Coopers' Company and Coborn School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 189 359 176 1.9
2016/17 190 344 174 1.81
2017/18 187 359 175 1.92
2018/19 200 372 194 1.86
2019/20 208 322 192 1.55
2020/21 206 362 202 1.76
2021/22 207 323 197 1.56
2022/23 206 345 198 1.67
2023/24 204 357 194 1.75
2024/25 203 349 193 1.72
2025/26 205 363 199 1.77
2026/27 205 383 197 1.87

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

383

1,205 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

51.4%

197 of 383

Offers to families outside the council

20%

41 of 205 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,046

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

500

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 The Coopers' Company and Coborn 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 The Coopers' Company and Coborn School reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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 The Coopers' Company and Coborn School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,372 places 1,361 on roll 2011/12 1,493 places 1,361 on roll 2012/13 1,395 places 1,384 on roll 2013/14 1,395 places 1,395 on roll 2014/15 1,395 places 1,392 on roll 2015/16 1,395 places 1,415 on roll 2016/17 1,395 places 1,385 on roll 2017/18 1,395 places 1,450 on roll 2018/19 1,395 places 1,466 on roll 2020/21 1,395 places 1,514 on roll 2021/22 1,395 places 1,514 on roll 2022/23 1,550 places 1,545 on roll 2023/24 1,550 places 1,564 on roll 2024/25 1,550 places 1,551 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Coopers' Company and Coborn School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Coopers' Company and Coborn School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
27 July 2020 No fault found ADA3684

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Havering

Postcode RM14 3HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136600).

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.