School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 79 families who named Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 205 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

205 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop's Hatfield Girls' 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

Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' 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 0.63 per place 95 first choices 150 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 131 first choices 149 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 161 first choices 150 places 2018/19 1.37 per place 202 first choices 147 places 2019/20 1.53 per place 233 first choices 152 places 2020/21 1.55 per place 231 first choices 149 places 2021/22 1.36 per place 206 first choices 151 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 198 first choices 149 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 183 first choices 155 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 228 first choices 154 places 2025/26 1.5 per place 223 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 205 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 205 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 95 95 0.63
2016/17 149 131 118 0.88
2017/18 150 161 117 1.07
2018/19 147 202 122 1.37
2019/20 152 233 126 1.53
2020/21 149 231 134 1.55
2021/22 151 206 127 1.36
2022/23 149 198 132 1.33
2023/24 155 183 128 1.18
2024/25 154 228 132 1.48
2025/26 149 223 133 1.5
2026/27 150 205 126 1.37

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

205

452 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.5%

126 of 205

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 150 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children looked after and children who were previously looked after, including those who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England, and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order¹ or a special guardianship order²
2 Children who have a sibling at the school at the time of application, unless the sibling is in the last year of the normal age-range of the school, ie in Year 13
3 Children of staff
4 Distance - a home to school distance measurement will be used with priority given to those nearest the school. In the event that two final applicants live the same distance from the school then random allocation will be used and overseen by an independent witness. All unsuccessful Sixth Form applicants have the right to appeal and the school must admit any student who is admitted through the appeal process. Appeals will be heard by an independent appeals panel. This panel will be formed as required and composed of 3-5 independent panel members who are not Governors. Appeals should be made in writing to admin@bishophatfield.herts.sch.uk. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 Head of Sixth Form • Subject Teachers
6 Form Tutor
7 Head of Year
8 Careers Teacher All consortium information and application form can be viewed and completed here. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Services for Young People provide additional advice on Careers Advice & Guidance Services for Young People The Campus, Welwyn Garden City Tel: 01992 588220 or www.servicesforyoungpeople.org ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……… Course allocation and acceptance into the consortium The consortium intends to deliver the courses offered in the blocking form. If student uptake numbers are very low for a class then the course may not run. During this academic year there may be a need to change the subjects offered in the blocks. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

780

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

770

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Bishop's Hatfield Girls' 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 Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 759 places 686 on roll 2012/13 759 places 693 on roll 2013/14 759 places 673 on roll 2014/15 759 places 690 on roll 2015/16 759 places 725 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 777 on roll 2017/18 1,003 places 825 on roll 2018/19 1,003 places 867 on roll 2020/21 1,003 places 888 on roll 2021/22 953 places 914 on roll 2022/23 953 places 944 on roll 2023/24 953 places 947 on roll 2024/25 980 places 946 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
Hertfordshire

Postcode AL10 8NL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137757).

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.