School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Marriotts School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 87 families who named Marriotts School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 221 and 297 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

297 first preferences for 221 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Marriotts School

There is no published appeal success rate for Marriotts 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

Marriotts School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Marriotts 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 0.84 per place 164 first choices 195 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 236 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 304 first choices 236 places 2018/19 1.36 per place 320 first choices 236 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 289 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 282 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 318 first choices 238 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 286 first choices 231 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 323 first choices 227 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 275 first choices 233 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 273 first choices 228 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 297 first choices 221 places
First preferences per place at Marriotts School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 297 first preferences for 221 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Marriotts School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 195 164 164 0.84
2016/17 239 236 220 0.99
2017/18 236 304 208 1.29
2018/19 236 320 218 1.36
2019/20 235 289 204 1.23
2020/21 234 282 201 1.21
2021/22 238 318 215 1.34
2022/23 231 286 200 1.24
2023/24 227 323 200 1.42
2024/25 233 275 203 1.18
2025/26 228 273 186 1.2
2026/27 221 297 210 1.34

Places offered

221

in 2026/27

Named first choice

297

653 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.7%

210 of 297

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 221 offers

How close you had to live

Marriotts School filled its places in 2026, and 1,378m — 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

1,378 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

1,191

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

315

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 Marriotts 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 Marriotts School reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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 Marriotts School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,013 places 885 on roll 2010/11 997 places 891 on roll 2011/12 997 places 899 on roll 2012/13 1,463 places 880 on roll 2013/14 1,458 places 761 on roll 2014/15 1,403 places 865 on roll 2015/16 1,450 places 963 on roll 2016/17 1,490 places 1,108 on roll 2017/18 1,580 places 1,299 on roll 2018/19 1,633 places 1,409 on roll 2020/21 1,531 places 1,406 on roll 2021/22 1,505 places 1,423 on roll 2022/23 1,519 places 1,433 on roll 2023/24 1,517 places 1,422 on roll 2024/25 1,515 places 1,410 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode SG2 8UT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 117534).

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.