School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Goffs Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 65 families who named Goffs Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 267 put it first.

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

1.17

first choices for every place available

267 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Goffs Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Goffs Academy, 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

Goffs Academy 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 Goffs Academy, 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 1.18 per place 250 first choices 211 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 279 first choices 208 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 307 first choices 244 places 2018/19 1.32 per place 316 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 342 first choices 237 places 2020/21 1.5 per place 356 first choices 237 places 2021/22 1.6 per place 377 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.4 per place 328 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 325 first choices 238 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 282 first choices 233 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 294 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.17 per place 267 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Goffs Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 267 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Goffs Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 211 250 196 1.18
2016/17 208 279 197 1.34
2017/18 244 307 227 1.26
2018/19 239 316 231 1.32
2019/20 237 342 223 1.44
2020/21 237 356 221 1.5
2021/22 235 377 226 1.6
2022/23 235 328 219 1.4
2023/24 238 325 226 1.37
2024/25 233 282 200 1.21
2025/26 237 294 211 1.24
2026/27 229 267 202 1.17

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

267

695 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.7%

202 of 267

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 229 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,204

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

4

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 Goffs Academy 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 Goffs Academy 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Goffs Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,300 places 1,286 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,283 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,256 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,285 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,314 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,309 on roll 2017/18 1,410 places 1,346 on roll 2018/19 1,518 places 1,414 on roll 2020/21 1,518 places 1,521 on roll 2021/22 1,518 places 1,537 on roll 2022/23 1,550 places 1,541 on roll 2023/24 1,550 places 1,592 on roll 2024/25 1,550 places 1,603 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 EN7 5QW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137532).

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.