School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Nobel School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named The Nobel School as their first choice did not get a place: 210 put it first and 185 of them were offered one.

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

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

210 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Nobel School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Nobel 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 Nobel 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 Nobel 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 1.28 per place 303 first choices 237 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 270 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 280 first choices 238 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 290 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.35 per place 318 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.19 per place 285 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 318 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.4 per place 330 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 289 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 261 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 298 first choices 233 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 210 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at The Nobel School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Nobel School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 237 303 230 1.28
2016/17 239 270 224 1.13
2017/18 238 280 214 1.18
2018/19 239 290 207 1.21
2019/20 236 318 213 1.35
2020/21 240 285 219 1.19
2021/22 237 318 218 1.34
2022/23 236 330 220 1.4
2023/24 233 289 206 1.24
2024/25 234 261 207 1.12
2025/26 233 298 211 1.28
2026/27 228 210 185 0.92

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

664 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.1%

185 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 228 offers

How close you had to live

The Nobel School filled its places in 2026, and 1,617m — 1.00 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

1.00 mi

1,617 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,197

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

349

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 Nobel 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 Nobel School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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 Nobel School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,247 places 1,195 on roll 2010/11 1,226 places 1,197 on roll 2011/12 1,226 places 1,232 on roll 2012/13 1,535 places 1,295 on roll 2013/14 1,516 places 1,335 on roll 2014/15 1,622 places 1,371 on roll 2015/16 1,516 places 1,432 on roll 2016/17 1,619 places 1,463 on roll 2017/18 1,610 places 1,485 on roll 2018/19 1,608 places 1,471 on roll 2020/21 1,546 places 1,435 on roll 2021/22 1,519 places 1,459 on roll 2022/23 1,541 places 1,459 on roll 2023/24 1,543 places 1,458 on roll 2024/25 1,549 places 1,493 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode SG2 0HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 117530).

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.