School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Richard Hale School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Richard Hale School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 189 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

189 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Richard Hale School

There is no published appeal success rate for Richard Hale 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

Richard Hale School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 2 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 Richard Hale 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 1.04 per place 170 first choices 164 places 2016/17 1.36 per place 245 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.4 per place 254 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 201 first choices 179 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 177 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 162 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 152 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 163 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 182 first choices 190 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 198 first choices 185 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 196 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 189 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Richard Hale School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Richard Hale School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 164 170 148 1.04
2016/17 180 245 176 1.36
2017/18 181 254 172 1.4
2018/19 179 201 172 1.12
2019/20 179 177 143 0.99
2020/21 178 162 154 0.91
2021/22 180 152 140 0.84
2022/23 180 163 138 0.91
2023/24 190 182 164 0.96
2024/25 185 198 163 1.07
2025/26 175 196 158 1.12
2026/27 168 189 153 1.12

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

520 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81%

153 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Richard Hale 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 Richard Hale 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 Boys looked after and boys 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 arrangements order 1 or a special guardianship order2.
2 Sibling: boys 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 Richard Hale, as an 11-18 school, is Years 7 to 13. A sibling must be on the roll of Richard Hale 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. [See explanatory notes below for a detailed explanation of ‘sibling’]. […] criterion continues in the source document
a) A parent* employed by the school as a member of staff on a permanent contract for a continuous period of two or more years at the date of application or
b) A parent* who has been recruited to a vacant post at the school for which there is a demonstrable skills shortage. *Parent This means the parent who has parental responsibility as defined in the Children Act 1989, or the person in the household who is defined as a parent for the purposes of Section 576 of the Education Act 1996. This could include a person who is not a biological parent but who has responsibility for the child (such as a child’s guardians, or adoptive parent) but will not usually include other relatives such as grandparents, aunts, uncles etc., unless they have all the rights, duties, powers and responsibilities and authority. […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Boys for whom Richard Hale is their nearest Hertfordshire school or academy that is non- faith and non partially selective, and which makes provision for boys. If more boys qualify under Rule 4 than there are places, the tiebreak would be those that live nearest the school.
4 Boys who live in the priority area for whom Richard Hale School is not the nearest Hertfordshire maintained non-faith, non-partially selective school or academy that makes provision for boys. If more boys qualify under Rule 5 than there are places available, places will be allocated to those who live nearest the school. * As the number of applications from these parishes has been very low over the previous years, averaging less than 1%, applications from these parishes will be allocated in line with Surplus Places. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 Boys who live outside the priority area for whom Richard Hale School, places will be allocated to those who live nearest 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.

Richard Hale 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

895

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

340

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 Richard Hale 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 Richard Hale School reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Richard Hale School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,102 places 1,127 on roll 2014/15 1,145 places 1,116 on roll 2015/16 1,160 places 1,092 on roll 2016/17 1,170 places 1,126 on roll 2017/18 1,220 places 1,127 on roll 2018/19 1,220 places 1,121 on roll 2020/21 1,220 places 1,185 on roll 2021/22 1,220 places 1,198 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,226 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,214 on roll 2024/25 1,240 places 1,212 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 SG13 8EN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139873).

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.