School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Watford Grammar School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 223 families who named Watford Grammar School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 211 and 396 put it first.

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

1.88

first choices for every place available

396 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Watford Grammar School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for Watford Grammar School for Boys, 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

Watford Grammar School for Boys 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 Watford Grammar School for Boys, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.07 per place 369 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.89 per place 350 first choices 185 places 2017/18 1.74 per place 331 first choices 190 places 2018/19 1.75 per place 375 first choices 214 places 2019/20 1.86 per place 396 first choices 213 places 2020/21 1.71 per place 368 first choices 215 places 2021/22 1.78 per place 379 first choices 213 places 2022/23 1.74 per place 361 first choices 208 places 2023/24 1.61 per place 355 first choices 221 places 2024/25 1.7 per place 363 first choices 214 places 2025/26 1.8 per place 387 first choices 215 places 2026/27 1.88 per place 396 first choices 211 places
First preferences per place at Watford Grammar School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 396 first preferences for 211 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Watford Grammar School for Boys, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 369 158 2.07
2016/17 185 350 163 1.89
2017/18 190 331 161 1.74
2018/19 214 375 191 1.75
2019/20 213 396 195 1.86
2020/21 215 368 184 1.71
2021/22 213 379 176 1.78
2022/23 208 361 159 1.74
2023/24 221 355 182 1.61
2024/25 214 363 173 1.7
2025/26 215 387 180 1.8
2026/27 211 396 173 1.88

Places offered

211

in 2026/27

Named first choice

396

953 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

43.7%

173 of 396

Offers to families outside the council

18%

37 of 211 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

1,120

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,123

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

376

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 Watford Grammar School for Boys 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 Watford Grammar School for Boys 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Watford Grammar School for Boys from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,300 places 1,268 on roll 2011/12 1,300 places 1,271 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,287 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,292 on roll 2014/15 1,310 places 1,312 on roll 2015/16 1,310 places 1,327 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,349 on roll 2017/18 1,496 places 1,339 on roll 2018/19 1,496 places 1,369 on roll 2020/21 1,496 places 1,456 on roll 2021/22 1,496 places 1,511 on roll 2022/23 1,496 places 1,530 on roll 2023/24 1,496 places 1,558 on roll 2024/25 1,496 places 1,612 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. Watford Grammar School for Boys has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Watford Grammar School for Boys. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
1 November 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3789
18 July 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2585

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 WD18 7JF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136276).

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.