School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queens' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 272 families who named Queens' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 259 and 436 put it first.

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

1.68

first choices for every place available

436 first preferences for 259 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queens' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Queens' 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

Queens' 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 Queens' 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 1.15 per place 302 first choices 263 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 290 first choices 264 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 333 first choices 264 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 333 first choices 264 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 391 first choices 265 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 332 first choices 269 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 348 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.4 per place 369 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 289 first choices 260 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 380 first choices 264 places 2025/26 1.63 per place 410 first choices 251 places 2026/27 1.68 per place 436 first choices 259 places
First preferences per place at Queens' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 436 first preferences for 259 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queens' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 263 302 155 1.15
2016/17 264 290 153 1.1
2017/18 264 333 172 1.26
2018/19 264 333 159 1.26
2019/20 265 391 171 1.48
2020/21 269 332 168 1.23
2021/22 268 348 166 1.3
2022/23 264 369 170 1.4
2023/24 260 289 142 1.11
2024/25 264 380 146 1.44
2025/26 251 410 145 1.63
2026/27 259 436 164 1.68

Places offered

259

in 2026/27

Named first choice

436

1,554 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

37.6%

164 of 436

Offers to families outside the council

8%

22 of 259 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Queens' 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 Queens' 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 Children looked after and children who were previously looked after, including those 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 arrangement order¹ or a special guardianship order².
2 Sibling.
3 Children of staff.
4 Priority postcodes - WD3-7, WD17-19, WD23-25, AL2 (south of M25), HA6, HA5 3**, HA5 4**, HA3 6**, HA7 3**, HA7 4**. . If Rule 4 is oversubscribed, the following criteria will be used:
5 Assessment test (This rule applies to those living in the above postcodes for the Year 6 into 7 transition only and then only to the end of that academic year)
(a) Up to 5% of places (13) for children with a particular aptitude in sport
(b) Up to 5% of places (13) for children with a particular aptitude in music
(c) Up to 35% of places (94) will be available by ability, in strict order of merit, based on the results of the assessment test
6 Distance Any remaining places, not less than 10% (27), for those qualifying under Rule 4 above will be allocated by the shortest distance to the school.
7 Distance Children whose permanent residence is outside the postcode areas above, preference being given to those living closest to the school.

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.

Queens' 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,349

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 Queens' 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 Queens' School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Queens' School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,647 places 1,650 on roll 2012/13 1,647 places 1,647 on roll 2013/14 1,647 places 1,689 on roll 2014/15 1,647 places 1,692 on roll 2015/16 1,647 places 1,671 on roll 2016/17 1,692 places 1,668 on roll 2017/18 1,750 places 1,669 on roll 2018/19 1,750 places 1,672 on roll 2020/21 1,750 places 1,685 on roll 2021/22 1,750 places 1,683 on roll 2022/23 1,750 places 1,694 on roll 2023/24 1,750 places 1,684 on roll 2024/25 1,750 places 1,658 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. Queens' School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Queens' School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
1 November 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3793

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 WD23 2TY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136877).

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.