School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dame Alice Owen's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 158 families who named Dame Alice Owen's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 186 and 331 put it first.

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

1.78

first choices for every place available

331 first preferences for 186 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dame Alice Owen's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dame Alice Owen's 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

Dame Alice Owen's 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 Dame Alice Owen's School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.69 per place 320 first choices 189 places 2016/17 1.71 per place 336 first choices 197 places 2017/18 1.57 per place 308 first choices 196 places 2018/19 1.8 per place 353 first choices 196 places 2019/20 2.02 per place 428 first choices 212 places 2020/21 1.64 per place 332 first choices 202 places 2021/22 2.06 per place 404 first choices 196 places 2022/23 1.71 per place 333 first choices 195 places 2023/24 1.59 per place 301 first choices 189 places 2024/25 1.65 per place 315 first choices 191 places 2025/26 1.65 per place 316 first choices 191 places 2026/27 1.78 per place 331 first choices 186 places
First preferences per place at Dame Alice Owen's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 331 first preferences for 186 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dame Alice Owen's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 189 320 181 1.69
2016/17 197 336 183 1.71
2017/18 196 308 187 1.57
2018/19 196 353 187 1.8
2019/20 212 428 205 2.02
2020/21 202 332 190 1.64
2021/22 196 404 183 2.06
2022/23 195 333 186 1.71
2023/24 189 301 176 1.59
2024/25 191 315 178 1.65
2025/26 191 316 176 1.65
2026/27 186 331 173 1.78

Places offered

186

in 2026/27

Named first choice

331

751 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

52.3%

173 of 331

Offers to families outside the council

59%

110 of 186 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,009

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

9

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

416

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 Dame Alice Owen's 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 Dame Alice Owen's 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dame Alice Owen's School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,416 places 1,438 on roll 2011/12 1,430 places 1,443 on roll 2012/13 1,416 places 1,456 on roll 2013/14 1,416 places 1,451 on roll 2014/15 1,416 places 1,462 on roll 2015/16 1,416 places 1,471 on roll 2016/17 1,416 places 1,464 on roll 2017/18 1,416 places 1,453 on roll 2018/19 1,416 places 1,453 on roll 2020/21 1,416 places 1,446 on roll 2021/22 1,416 places 1,444 on roll 2022/23 1,416 places 1,448 on roll 2023/24 1,416 places 1,478 on roll 2024/25 1,416 places 1,465 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. Dame Alice Owen's School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Dame Alice Owen's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 September 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2984
1 August 2012 No fault found ADA2264

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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode EN6 2DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136554).

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.