School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Loreto College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Loreto College as their first choice did not get a place: 129 put it first and 111 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.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

129 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Loreto College

There is no published appeal success rate for Loreto 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

Loreto College turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 4 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 Loreto College, 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 1.07 per place 158 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 169 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 181 first choices 159 places 2018/19 0.72 per place 113 first choices 156 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 150 first choices 157 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 128 first choices 159 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 127 first choices 159 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 124 first choices 158 places 2023/24 0.81 per place 117 first choices 144 places 2024/25 0.74 per place 110 first choices 148 places 2025/26 0.73 per place 107 first choices 146 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 129 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Loreto College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 129 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Loreto College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 158 124 1.07
2016/17 159 169 138 1.06
2017/18 159 181 134 1.14
2018/19 156 113 112 0.72
2019/20 157 150 127 0.96
2020/21 159 128 120 0.81
2021/22 159 127 118 0.8
2022/23 158 124 115 0.78
2023/24 144 117 104 0.81
2024/25 148 110 97 0.74
2025/26 146 107 107 0.73
2026/27 146 129 111 0.88

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

129

444 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86%

111 of 129

Offers to families outside the council

43%

63 of 146 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

840

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

772

91.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

68

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

120

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 Loreto 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 Loreto College reported 68 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Loreto College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 909 places 905 on roll 2012/13 950 places 891 on roll 2013/14 950 places 919 on roll 2014/15 950 places 934 on roll 2015/16 950 places 912 on roll 2016/17 950 places 900 on roll 2017/18 970 places 944 on roll 2018/19 970 places 942 on roll 2020/21 970 places 945 on roll 2021/22 970 places 951 on roll 2022/23 970 places 961 on roll 2023/24 970 places 949 on roll 2024/25 960 places 927 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode AL1 3RQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138106).

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.