School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hockerill Anglo-European College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 92 families who named Hockerill Anglo-European College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 61 and 152 put it first.

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

2.49

first choices for every place available

152 first preferences for 61 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hockerill Anglo-European College

There is no published appeal success rate for Hockerill Anglo-European College, 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

Hockerill Anglo-European College 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 Hockerill Anglo-European College, 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 2.09 per place 234 first choices 112 places 2016/17 1.87 per place 222 first choices 119 places 2017/18 1.96 per place 219 first choices 112 places 2018/19 2.16 per place 244 first choices 113 places 2019/20 2.15 per place 249 first choices 116 places 2020/21 2.02 per place 243 first choices 120 places 2021/22 1.99 per place 279 first choices 140 places 2022/23 2.06 per place 261 first choices 127 places 2023/24 2.18 per place 216 first choices 99 places 2024/25 2.15 per place 226 first choices 105 places 2025/26 2.38 per place 138 first choices 58 places 2026/27 2.49 per place 152 first choices 61 places
First preferences per place at Hockerill Anglo-European College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 152 first preferences for 61 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hockerill Anglo-European College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 112 234 103 2.09
2016/17 119 222 108 1.87
2017/18 112 219 103 1.96
2018/19 113 244 102 2.16
2019/20 116 249 105 2.15
2020/21 120 243 103 2.02
2021/22 140 279 122 1.99
2022/23 127 261 108 2.06
2023/24 99 216 87 2.18
2024/25 105 226 91 2.15
2025/26 58 138 57 2.38
2026/27 61 152 60 2.49

Places offered

61

in 2026/27

Named first choice

152

704 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

39.5%

60 of 152

Offers to families outside the council

25%

15 of 61 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

670

111.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

70

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Hockerill Anglo-European College 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 Hockerill Anglo-European College 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 Hockerill Anglo-European College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 728 places 805 on roll 2011/12 818 places 808 on roll 2012/13 818 places 839 on roll 2013/14 818 places 847 on roll 2014/15 818 places 857 on roll 2015/16 818 places 847 on roll 2016/17 818 places 843 on roll 2017/18 850 places 832 on roll 2018/19 850 places 841 on roll 2020/21 850 places 854 on roll 2021/22 900 places 901 on roll 2022/23 900 places 918 on roll 2023/24 900 places 920 on roll 2024/25 900 places 924 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. Hockerill Anglo-European College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Hockerill Anglo-European College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
27 November 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2981

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 CM23 5HX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136482).

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.