School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Samuel Ryder Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named Samuel Ryder Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 140 and 140 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

first choices for every place available

140 first preferences for 140 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Samuel Ryder Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Samuel Ryder Academy, 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

Samuel Ryder Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 6 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 Samuel Ryder Academy, 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 0.54 per place 95 first choices 175 places 2016/17 0.57 per place 101 first choices 177 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 155 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.8 per place 144 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.43 per place 196 first choices 137 places 2020/21 1.46 per place 185 first choices 127 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 143 first choices 152 places 2022/23 1 per place 144 first choices 144 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 173 first choices 167 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 151 first choices 142 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 134 first choices 145 places 2026/27 1 per place 140 first choices 140 places
First preferences per place at Samuel Ryder Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 140 first preferences for 140 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Samuel Ryder Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 175 95 95 0.54
2016/17 177 101 99 0.57
2017/18 180 155 132 0.86
2018/19 179 144 111 0.8
2019/20 137 196 112 1.43
2020/21 127 185 114 1.46
2021/22 152 143 122 0.94
2022/23 144 144 124 1
2023/24 167 173 147 1.04
2024/25 142 151 118 1.06
2025/26 145 134 110 0.92
2026/27 140 140 108 1

Places offered

140

in 2026/27

Named first choice

140

670 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.1%

108 of 140

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 140 offers

How close you had to live

Samuel Ryder Academy filled its places in 2026, and 1,240m — 0.77 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

0.77 mi

1,240 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,409

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

89

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

220

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 Samuel Ryder Academy 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 Samuel Ryder Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Samuel Ryder Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,520 places 344 on roll 2013/14 1,520 places 424 on roll 2014/15 1,520 places 581 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 724 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 882 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 1,084 on roll 2018/19 1,540 places 1,200 on roll 2020/21 1,540 places 1,380 on roll 2021/22 1,540 places 1,467 on roll 2022/23 1,540 places 1,510 on roll 2023/24 1,540 places 1,547 on roll 2024/25 1,540 places 1,575 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode AL1 5AR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138582).

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.