School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Reach Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named The Reach Free School as their first choice did not get a place: 84 put it first and 67 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.

17

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

84 first preferences for 109 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Reach Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Reach Free 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 Reach Free School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 3 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 Reach Free 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 0.37 per place 43 first choices 117 places 2016/17 0.52 per place 58 first choices 112 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 103 first choices 119 places 2018/19 0.71 per place 80 first choices 113 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 132 first choices 115 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 109 first choices 119 places 2021/22 0.73 per place 85 first choices 117 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 126 first choices 141 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 132 first choices 116 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 118 first choices 108 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 121 first choices 107 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 84 first choices 109 places
First preferences per place at The Reach Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 84 first preferences for 109 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Reach Free School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 117 43 43 0.37
2016/17 112 58 58 0.52
2017/18 119 103 73 0.87
2018/19 113 80 71 0.71
2019/20 115 132 89 1.15
2020/21 119 109 93 0.92
2021/22 117 85 85 0.73
2022/23 141 126 116 0.89
2023/24 116 132 80 1.14
2024/25 108 118 76 1.09
2025/26 107 121 78 1.13
2026/27 109 84 67 0.77

Places offered

109

in 2026/27

Named first choice

84

298 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.8%

67 of 84

Offers to families outside the council

34%

37 of 109 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

639

106.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

39

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Reach Free 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 Reach Free 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Reach Free School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 840 places 50 on roll 2014/15 840 places 157 on roll 2015/16 840 places 279 on roll 2016/17 840 places 399 on roll 2017/18 840 places 525 on roll 2018/19 840 places 582 on roll 2020/21 840 places 670 on roll 2021/22 840 places 687 on roll 2022/23 840 places 746 on roll 2023/24 840 places 742 on roll 2024/25 840 places 744 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hertfordshire

Postcode WD3 8AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139662).

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.