School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Croxley Danes School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Croxley Danes School as their first choice did not get a place: 130 put it first and 107 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Hertfordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

23

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

130 first preferences for 165 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Croxley Danes School

There is no published appeal success rate for Croxley Danes 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

Croxley Danes School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 9 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Croxley Danes School, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.57 per place 101 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.78 per place 139 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 172 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 198 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 222 first choices 172 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 213 first choices 173 places 2024/25 0.74 per place 125 first choices 170 places 2025/26 0.77 per place 132 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.79 per place 130 first choices 165 places
First preferences per place at Croxley Danes School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 130 first preferences for 165 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Croxley Danes School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 178 101 81 0.57
2019/20 179 139 102 0.78
2020/21 175 172 113 0.98
2021/22 174 198 135 1.14
2022/23 172 222 138 1.29
2023/24 173 213 134 1.23
2024/25 170 125 96 0.74
2025/26 172 132 105 0.77
2026/27 165 130 107 0.79

Places offered

165

in 2026/27

Named first choice

130

769 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.3%

107 of 130

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 165 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

306

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 Croxley Danes 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 Croxley Danes School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Croxley Danes School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,206 places 120 on roll 2018/19 1,206 places 297 on roll 2020/21 1,206 places 658 on roll 2021/22 1,206 places 835 on roll 2022/23 1,206 places 987 on roll 2023/24 1,206 places 1,089 on roll 2024/25 1,206 places 1,081 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode WD3 3LR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144402).

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.