School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Goffs - Churchgate Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Goffs - Churchgate Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 91 put it first and 79 of them were offered one.

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

12

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

91 first preferences for 110 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Goffs - Churchgate Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Goffs - Churchgate 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 - Churchgate Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 3 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 Goffs - Churchgate 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 0.74 per place 45 first choices 61 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 29 first choices 37 places 2017/18 0.52 per place 36 first choices 69 places 2018/19 0.59 per place 68 first choices 116 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 100 first choices 119 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 126 first choices 118 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 103 first choices 108 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 141 first choices 118 places 2023/24 1.57 per place 162 first choices 103 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 138 first choices 112 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 121 first choices 112 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 91 first choices 110 places
First preferences per place at Goffs - Churchgate Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 91 first preferences for 110 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Goffs - Churchgate 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 61 45 45 0.74
2016/17 37 29 28 0.78
2017/18 69 36 36 0.52
2018/19 116 68 68 0.59
2019/20 119 100 72 0.84
2020/21 118 126 88 1.07
2021/22 108 103 61 0.95
2022/23 118 141 90 1.19
2023/24 103 162 83 1.57
2024/25 112 138 91 1.23
2025/26 112 121 85 1.08
2026/27 110 91 79 0.83

Places offered

110

in 2026/27

Named first choice

91

456 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

79 of 91

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 110 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 117596.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Goffs - Churchgate Academy published for 2026 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 Goffs - Churchgate Academy, 2026 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 Looked After Children as defined in section 22 (1) of the Children Act 1989 1 and previously looked after children. Children are previously looked after if they were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a special guardianship order or residency order, this 1 a child who is looked after by a local authority is a reference to a child who is—
(a) in their care; or
(b) provided with accommodation by the authority in the exercise of any functions (in particular those under this Act) which the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 includes children previously looked after outside England. The child’s previously Looked After status will be decided in accordance with the definition outlined in The Children and Social Work Act 20172
2 Children for whom it can be demonstrated that they have a particular medical or social need to go to the school (See note (i) below)
3 Children who will have an older brother or sister at the school at the time of admission (see note (ii) below)
4 Children of Staff (both teaching staff and support staff) employed by the school (either on a full or part time basis) (see note (iii) below)
5 Children attending the named feeder primary schools will be allocated places at the school on a quota basis in the proportions set out below (see notes (v), (v), (vi) and (vii) below) a) Andrews Lane School 8% b) Bonneygrove School 10% c) Brooklands School 13% d) Burleigh School 14% e) Cuffley School 2% f) Dewhurst St Mary’s School 2% g) Downfield School 13% h) Fairfields School 8% i) Flamstead End School 8% j) Goffs Oak School 2% k) Hurst Drive School 11% l) Millbrook School 5% m) St Paul’s School 2% n) Woodside Primary School 2% Please note that the above percentages refer to the percentage of places remaining - following application of criteria 1 to 4 - not the percentage of students in […] criterion continues in the source document
i. to have been in state care in a place outside England and Wales because he or she would not otherwise have been cared for adequately, and ii. to have ceased to be in that state care as a result of being adopted. A child is in “state care” if he or she is in the care of, or accommodated by – (a) a public authority,
(b) a religious organisation, or
(c) any other organisation the sole or main purpose of which is to benefit society. If a named feeder primary school does not use its full allocation, any surplus places will be allocated under this criterion to a child/children from the other feeder schools living closest to the school using a straight line distance measurement from each applicant’s home to the school (see note (vi) below).
6 Any remaining places will be allocated to children living closest to the school, using HCC’s computerised mapping system (see note (vi) below). In the event of a ‘tie break’ random allocation will be used. Random allocations will be administered by HCC on behalf of the Trustees of the school. Every child entered onto the HCC admissions database has an individual random number assigned between 1 and 1 million, against each preference school. When there is a need for a final tie break the random number is used to allocate the place, with the lowest number given priority. […] 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 2026 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.

Goffs - Churchgate Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

589

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 - Churchgate 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 - Churchgate Academy reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Goffs - Churchgate Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,026 places 962 on roll 2010/11 1,000 places 901 on roll 2011/12 1,036 places 811 on roll 2012/13 984 places 721 on roll 2013/14 937 places 590 on roll 2014/15 973 places 474 on roll 2015/16 973 places 385 on roll 2016/17 875 places 265 on roll 2017/18 600 places 250 on roll 2018/19 600 places 332 on roll 2020/21 600 places 470 on roll 2021/22 950 places 538 on roll 2022/23 950 places 602 on roll 2023/24 950 places 597 on roll 2024/25 600 places 589 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 EN8 9LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145297).

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.