School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Presdales School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Presdales School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 191 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

191 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Presdales School

There is no published appeal success rate for Presdales 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

Presdales School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 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 Presdales 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 1.32 per place 224 first choices 170 places 2016/17 1.33 per place 227 first choices 171 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 193 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 222 first choices 182 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 192 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 178 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 191 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 189 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 201 first choices 182 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 194 first choices 177 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 182 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 191 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Presdales School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Presdales School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 170 224 158 1.32
2016/17 171 227 160 1.33
2017/18 180 193 165 1.07
2018/19 182 222 176 1.22
2019/20 179 192 151 1.07
2020/21 180 178 149 0.99
2021/22 180 191 151 1.06
2022/23 179 189 157 1.06
2023/24 182 201 164 1.1
2024/25 177 194 167 1.1
2025/26 175 182 159 1.04
2026/27 173 191 162 1.1

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

437 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.8%

162 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 173 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Presdales School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Presdales School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Girls in public care (Children Looked After) and girls who were previously looked after, including those girls who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (or became subject to a Child Arrangements Order or a Special Guardianship Order).
2 Medical or Social: Girls for whom it can be demonstrated that they have a particular medical or social need to go to Presdales. A panel of officers will determine whether the evidence provided is sufficiently compelling to meet the requirements for this rule. The evidence must relate specifically to Presdales and must clearly demonstrate why Presdales is the only school that can meet the child’s needs.
3 Sibling: Girls who have a sibling at the school at the time of application, unless the sibling is in the last year of the normal age-range of the school. (Note: the ‘normal age range’ for Presdales as an 11-18 school, is Years 7 to 13). A sibling must be expected to be on roll at Presdales at the time the younger child starts. A sibling link will not be recognised for children living temporarily in the same house, e.g. a child who usually lives with one parent but has temporarily moved or a Child Looked After in a respite placement of a very short term or bridging foster placement. (Please see

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Presdales School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

901

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

891

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

246

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 Presdales 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 Presdales School reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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 Presdales School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,218 places 1,068 on roll 2012/13 1,218 places 1,081 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 1,046 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 1,074 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 1,092 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 1,083 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 1,100 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 1,118 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,152 on roll 2021/22 1,136 places 1,158 on roll 2022/23 1,136 places 1,162 on roll 2023/24 1,136 places 1,172 on roll 2024/25 1,147 places 1,164 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 SG12 9NX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137985).

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.