School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ashlyns School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 41 families who named Ashlyns School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 231 and 253 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

253 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ashlyns School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ashlyns 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 Hertfordshire 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 Hertfordshire, 21% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 314 of 1,496 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 Hertfordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hertfordshire 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

Ashlyns School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 Ashlyns 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 0.98 per place 203 first choices 208 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 219 first choices 206 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 248 first choices 238 places 2018/19 1.18 per place 281 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 293 first choices 237 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 301 first choices 263 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 286 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 260 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 219 first choices 230 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 283 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 269 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 253 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at Ashlyns School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 253 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ashlyns School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 203 178 0.98
2016/17 206 219 186 1.06
2017/18 238 248 210 1.04
2018/19 239 281 225 1.18
2019/20 237 293 215 1.24
2020/21 263 301 253 1.14
2021/22 268 286 243 1.07
2022/23 234 260 226 1.11
2023/24 230 219 205 0.95
2024/25 234 283 221 1.21
2025/26 235 269 210 1.14
2026/27 231 253 212 1.1

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

253

638 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

212 of 253

Offers to families outside the council

4%

10 of 231 offers

How close you had to live

Ashlyns School filled its places in 2026, and 6,148m — 3.82 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the in priority area, nearest school criterion.

Last place offered at

3.82 mi

6,148 metres, 2026

Under criterion

In Priority Area, Nearest School

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Hertfordshire Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,227

102.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

27

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

357

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 Ashlyns 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 Ashlyns 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ashlyns School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,234 places 748 on roll 2010/11 1,234 places 770 on roll 2011/12 1,116 places 795 on roll 2012/13 1,116 places 810 on roll 2013/14 1,233 places 1,173 on roll 2014/15 1,269 places 1,165 on roll 2015/16 1,499 places 1,245 on roll 2016/17 1,355 places 1,266 on roll 2017/18 1,514 places 1,271 on roll 2018/19 1,514 places 1,334 on roll 2020/21 1,510 places 1,397 on roll 2021/22 1,536 places 1,476 on roll 2022/23 1,557 places 1,501 on roll 2023/24 1,557 places 1,542 on roll 2024/25 1,557 places 1,533 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode HP4 3AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 117578).

Other contested secondary schools in Hertfordshire

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.