School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St George's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named St George's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 235 put it first.

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

1.38

first choices for every place available

235 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St George's School

There is no published appeal success rate for St George'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

St George'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 St George's School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 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 1.47 per place 252 first choices 171 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 193 first choices 171 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 218 first choices 175 places 2018/19 1.49 per place 257 first choices 172 places 2019/20 1.53 per place 271 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.56 per place 273 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.4 per place 240 first choices 172 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 242 first choices 191 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 228 first choices 193 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 197 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 191 first choices 160 places 2026/27 1.38 per place 235 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at St George's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 235 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St George'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
2015/16 171 252 166 1.47
2016/17 171 193 159 1.13
2017/18 175 218 166 1.25
2018/19 172 257 169 1.49
2019/20 177 271 171 1.53
2020/21 175 273 171 1.56
2021/22 172 240 172 1.4
2022/23 191 242 188 1.27
2023/24 193 228 187 1.18
2024/25 174 197 163 1.13
2025/26 160 191 152 1.19
2026/27 170 235 158 1.38

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

235

578 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.2%

158 of 235

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 170 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

925

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

966

104.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

41

reported as full or beyond

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 St George'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 St George's School 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 St George's School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,325 places 1,321 on roll 2013/14 1,325 places 1,321 on roll 2014/15 1,325 places 1,325 on roll 2015/16 1,325 places 1,324 on roll 2016/17 1,325 places 1,328 on roll 2017/18 1,336 places 1,336 on roll 2018/19 1,325 places 1,372 on roll 2020/21 1,325 places 1,358 on roll 2021/22 1,325 places 1,343 on roll 2022/23 1,325 places 1,373 on roll 2023/24 1,325 places 1,379 on roll 2024/25 1,325 places 1,363 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. St George's School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming St George's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
18 July 2016 No fault found ADA3214

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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode AL5 4TD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138356).

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.