School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Hemel Hempstead School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 78 families who named The Hemel Hempstead School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 210 and 261 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

261 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Hemel Hempstead School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Hemel Hempstead 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 Hemel Hempstead 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 The Hemel Hempstead 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 212 first choices 185 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 231 first choices 186 places 2017/18 1.45 per place 267 first choices 184 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 247 first choices 186 places 2019/20 1.18 per place 257 first choices 217 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 305 first choices 216 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 310 first choices 214 places 2022/23 1.35 per place 285 first choices 211 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 268 first choices 216 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 262 first choices 210 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 245 first choices 213 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 261 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at The Hemel Hempstead School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 261 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Hemel Hempstead School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 185 212 164 1.15
2016/17 186 231 169 1.24
2017/18 184 267 176 1.45
2018/19 186 247 169 1.33
2019/20 217 257 176 1.18
2020/21 216 305 198 1.41
2021/22 214 310 189 1.45
2022/23 211 285 192 1.35
2023/24 216 268 191 1.24
2024/25 210 262 184 1.25
2025/26 213 245 182 1.15
2026/27 210 261 183 1.24

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

261

844 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.1%

183 of 261

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 210 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 117500.

How close you had to live

The Hemel Hempstead School filled its places in 2026, and 1,295m — 0.80 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

0.80 mi

1,295 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,068

92.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

82

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Hemel Hempstead 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 Hemel Hempstead School reported 82 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Hemel Hempstead School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,207 places 1,172 on roll 2010/11 1,207 places 1,144 on roll 2011/12 1,201 places 1,149 on roll 2012/13 1,218 places 1,154 on roll 2013/14 1,218 places 1,136 on roll 2014/15 1,237 places 1,122 on roll 2015/16 1,237 places 1,105 on roll 2016/17 1,218 places 1,111 on roll 2017/18 1,231 places 1,139 on roll 2018/19 1,336 places 1,159 on roll 2020/21 1,380 places 1,252 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,260 on roll 2022/23 1,450 places 1,296 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,311 on roll 2024/25 1,450 places 1,280 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 HP1 1TX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149500).

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.