School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Longdean School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named Longdean School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 224 and 244 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

244 first preferences for 224 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Longdean School

There is no published appeal success rate for Longdean 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

Longdean School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 1 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 Longdean School, 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 0.79 per place 168 first choices 213 places 2016/17 0.71 per place 143 first choices 201 places 2017/18 0.78 per place 178 first choices 229 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 208 first choices 227 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 291 first choices 233 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 241 first choices 230 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 246 first choices 234 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 264 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 275 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 255 first choices 221 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 229 first choices 213 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 244 first choices 224 places
First preferences per place at Longdean School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 244 first preferences for 224 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Longdean School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 213 168 168 0.79
2016/17 201 143 143 0.71
2017/18 229 178 178 0.78
2018/19 227 208 187 0.92
2019/20 233 291 211 1.25
2020/21 230 241 205 1.05
2021/22 234 246 207 1.05
2022/23 236 264 217 1.12
2023/24 219 275 197 1.26
2024/25 221 255 204 1.15
2025/26 213 229 188 1.08
2026/27 224 244 206 1.09

Places offered

224

in 2026/27

Named first choice

244

681 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

206 of 244

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 224 offers

How close you had to live

Longdean School filled its places in 2026, and 1,392m — 0.86 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the in priority area, not nearest school criterion.

Last place offered at

0.86 mi

1,392 metres, 2026

Under criterion

In Priority Area, Not Nearest School

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Hertfordshire Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

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 Longdean 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 Longdean 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Longdean School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,300 places 1,151 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,140 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,139 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,128 on roll 2015/16 1,328 places 1,157 on roll 2016/17 1,328 places 1,192 on roll 2017/18 1,328 places 1,214 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,261 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,345 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,370 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,403 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,437 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,440 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 HP3 8JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137110).

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.