School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Bishop's Stortford High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 117 families who named The Bishop's Stortford High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 277 put it first.

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

1.61

first choices for every place available

277 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Bishop's Stortford High School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Bishop's Stortford High 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

The Bishop's Stortford High 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 The Bishop's Stortford High 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 0.99 per place 175 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 208 first choices 167 places 2017/18 1.24 per place 209 first choices 168 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 215 first choices 167 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 208 first choices 167 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 223 first choices 167 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 221 first choices 168 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 196 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 191 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 216 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.41 per place 246 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.61 per place 277 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at The Bishop's Stortford High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 277 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Bishop's Stortford High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 175 131 0.99
2016/17 167 208 137 1.25
2017/18 168 209 150 1.24
2018/19 167 215 145 1.29
2019/20 167 208 140 1.25
2020/21 167 223 145 1.34
2021/22 168 221 139 1.32
2022/23 179 196 154 1.09
2023/24 178 191 155 1.07
2024/25 180 216 155 1.2
2025/26 174 246 152 1.41
2026/27 172 277 160 1.61

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

277

559 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

57.8%

160 of 277

Offers to families outside the council

26%

45 of 172 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Bishop's Stortford High 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 The Bishop's Stortford High 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 arrangements order¹ or a special guardianship order². See below for further clarification regarding Children Looked After.
2 Boys who have a sibling attending the school, in Years 7 - 13, at the closing date for applications will be admitted. See below for further clarification regarding Siblings.
3 Sons of teaching staff and support staff who have been permanently employed (either full or part time) directly by the school for two or more years at the closing date for applications; or a member of staff who has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable shortage. The staff member must be the child’s legal parent (by blood, adoption or step-parent) and have been living at the same address as the child for a minimum of 2 years.
4 After criteria 1-3 have been applied (and allowing 10% for aptitude), 100% of the remaining places (i.e. those so far unallocated) will be allocated to children who at the closing date for application attend one of the following groups of primary schools. Places allocated will be based on the percentage of the total number of applications received from that group. For example, if 60 applications are received from Group A out of a total of 400 applications received under Criterion 4, (60/400 x 100 = 15%) then 15% of the remaining places will be allocated to Group A. This example is for illustrative purposes only. There is no hierarchy between or within each group. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 For applicants who have not been allocated a place under criterion 1-4, up to 10% (18 in total) of the Published Admission Number (180) will be allocated using the following criterion: Up to 9 places will be allocated to pupils with a proven aptitude in sport. Aptitude will be assessed using an appropriate sporting aptitude test. Priority will be given to those with the lowest score. Up to 9 places will be allocated to pupils with a proven aptitude in music. Aptitude will be assessed by an appropriate musical aptitude test. Priority will be given to those with the highest score.
6 If fewer than 10% or 18 students qualify to be admitted under either proven aptitude in sport or music (criterion 5), then these remaining aptitude places will be allocated to pupils who live closest to the school, measured by the straight-line distance from the applicant’s home address as determined by the Local Authority’s distance measuring system. Hertfordshire County Council’s ‘

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.

The Bishop's Stortford High 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

879

97.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

446

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 The Bishop's Stortford High 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 The Bishop's Stortford High School reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.7% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Bishop's Stortford High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,220 places 1,120 on roll 2010/11 1,220 places 1,119 on roll 2011/12 1,221 places 1,120 on roll 2012/13 1,211 places 1,091 on roll 2013/14 1,211 places 1,097 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,118 on roll 2015/16 1,262 places 1,133 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,184 on roll 2017/18 1,297 places 1,187 on roll 2018/19 1,211 places 1,185 on roll 2020/21 1,211 places 1,195 on roll 2021/22 1,220 places 1,182 on roll 2022/23 1,346 places 1,189 on roll 2023/24 1,346 places 1,254 on roll 2024/25 1,346 places 1,255 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. The Bishop's Stortford High School has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in 2 of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Bishop's Stortford High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 July 2021 No fault found VAR2159
24 June 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2590
6 August 2012 Arrangements did not comply ADA2307

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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode CM23 4SH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 117577).

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.