School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Parmiter's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 305 families who named Parmiter's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 486 put it first.

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

2.37

first choices for every place available

486 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Parmiter's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Parmiter's 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

Parmiter's School 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 Parmiter's School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.2 per place 453 first choices 206 places 2016/17 2.21 per place 457 first choices 207 places 2017/18 1.86 per place 384 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.96 per place 396 first choices 202 places 2019/20 2.24 per place 451 first choices 201 places 2020/21 2.06 per place 418 first choices 203 places 2021/22 2.39 per place 481 first choices 201 places 2022/23 2.3 per place 490 first choices 213 places 2023/24 2.32 per place 474 first choices 204 places 2024/25 2.48 per place 495 first choices 200 places 2025/26 2.81 per place 556 first choices 198 places 2026/27 2.37 per place 486 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Parmiter's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 486 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Parmiter's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 206 453 190 2.2
2016/17 207 457 194 2.21
2017/18 206 384 190 1.86
2018/19 202 396 170 1.96
2019/20 201 451 177 2.24
2020/21 203 418 180 2.06
2021/22 201 481 173 2.39
2022/23 213 490 194 2.3
2023/24 204 474 173 2.32
2024/25 200 495 175 2.48
2025/26 198 556 176 2.81
2026/27 205 486 181 2.37

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

486

1,400 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

37.2%

181 of 486

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 205 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,075

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Parmiter's 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 Parmiter's School reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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 Parmiter's 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 1,260 places 1,258 on roll 2012/13 1,400 places 1,333 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,360 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,355 on roll 2015/16 1,392 places 1,385 on roll 2016/17 1,392 places 1,417 on roll 2017/18 1,421 places 1,431 on roll 2018/19 1,441 places 1,450 on roll 2020/21 1,392 places 1,424 on roll 2021/22 1,392 places 1,428 on roll 2022/23 1,392 places 1,430 on roll 2023/24 1,392 places 1,449 on roll 2024/25 1,480 places 1,466 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. Parmiter's School has been the subject of 4 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in 2 of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Parmiter's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
5 August 2022 No fault found ADA3942
1 November 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3794
23 August 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3759
4 July 2019 No fault found ADA3538

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 WD25 0UU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136899).

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.