School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Watford Grammar School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 191 families who named Watford Grammar School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 359 put it first.

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

1.77

first choices for every place available

359 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Watford Grammar School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Watford Grammar School for Girls, 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 Girls 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 Girls, 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 2.27 per place 408 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.93 per place 348 first choices 180 places 2017/18 2.05 per place 367 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.86 per place 376 first choices 202 places 2019/20 1.62 per place 338 first choices 209 places 2020/21 1.82 per place 383 first choices 210 places 2021/22 2.07 per place 428 first choices 207 places 2022/23 1.79 per place 370 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1.83 per place 379 first choices 207 places 2024/25 1.67 per place 345 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.63 per place 340 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.77 per place 359 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at Watford Grammar School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 359 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Watford Grammar School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 408 169 2.27
2016/17 180 348 164 1.93
2017/18 179 367 158 2.05
2018/19 202 376 179 1.86
2019/20 209 338 185 1.62
2020/21 210 383 178 1.82
2021/22 207 428 182 2.07
2022/23 207 370 175 1.79
2023/24 207 379 176 1.83
2024/25 206 345 167 1.67
2025/26 208 340 164 1.63
2026/27 203 359 168 1.77

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

359

817 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

46.8%

168 of 359

Offers to families outside the council

20%

41 of 203 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Watford Grammar School for Girls published for 2026 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 Watford Grammar School for Girls, 2026 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 Looked After Children and children who were previously looked after, including those who appear (to Watford Grammar School for Girls) to have been in state care outside of England, but ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted or became subject to a child arrangement order or a special guardianship order.
2 Girls whose normal home address is nearest to the school and who would not be allocated a place under any other criterion, except criterion 6 (up to 21 places, 10% of the total admissions).
3 Girls with a parent who is a permanent full-time or part-time member of the school staff (inclusive of teaching and support staff roles). To qualify, the member of staff must either have been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission is made or have been recruited to fill a post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. In all cases, the member of staff must have parental responsibil ity (sole or shared) for the girl.
4 Girls with a sibling (sister) enrolled at the school, excluding sisters who first entered the school in the Sixth Form (Year 12 or Year 13).
5 Girls with a sibling (brother) enrolled at Watford Grammar School for Boys, excluding brothers who first entered the school in the Sixth Form (Year 12 or Year 13).
6 Places will then be allocated to girls in increasing distance order using straight line distance between the family’s normal home address and the school. Specialist places
7 Girls selected on the basis of aptitude for music as measured by the school's assessment procedures, in merit order (up to 21 places, 10% of total admissions).
8 Girls selected by academic ability as measured by the school’s assessment procedures, in merit order ( 52 places, 25% of total admissions) Qualification under criteria 1, 3 and 4 does not require residence at a home address within the admission area. Except for those applying under criteria 1, 3 or 4, all applicants are strongly recommended to sit the school’s admissions tests. Girls who are entitled to be offered a place under more than one of criteria 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 will be offered a place under the l owest numbered of those criteria2 . […] criterion continues in the source document
9 Late Transfer to Year 7 – The Waiting List Girls who are unsuccessful in gaining admission to Year 7 and have expressed continuing interest will be kept on a waiting list for one academic year. During that year any vacancies that arise in Year 7 will be filled using the same criteria as those applie d to the original allocation of places. The waiting list will be ranked in accordance with the order of priority shown in the oversubs cription criteria. This means that girls will move up and down the list as the list will be re-ordered every time a new girl is added to it. […] criterion continues in the source document
10 Late Transfer Procedure (Years 8-11) Girls seeking admission to Years 8 to 11 will be considered in accordance with the school’s late transfer procedure. The school participates in HCC’s Fair Access protocol, which means that children will be admitted under this protocol before the late transfer procedure.
11 Late transfer oversubscription criteria Where a place becomes available, the following criteria will be applied in the order set out below to determine which girl to admit:
12 Looked After Children and children who were previously looked after, including those who appear (to Watford Grammar School for Girls) to have been in state care outside of England, but ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted or became subject

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 2026 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.

Watford Grammar School for Girls's determined admission arrangements for 2026 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

997

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,046

104.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

49

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

403

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 Girls 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 Girls 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 Girls from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,250 places 1,266 on roll 2011/12 1,283 places 1,290 on roll 2012/13 1,283 places 1,304 on roll 2013/14 1,313 places 1,313 on roll 2014/15 1,313 places 1,294 on roll 2015/16 1,313 places 1,297 on roll 2016/17 1,313 places 1,308 on roll 2017/18 1,310 places 1,260 on roll 2018/19 1,370 places 1,284 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,401 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,429 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,452 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,448 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,429 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 Girls 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 Watford Grammar School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
1 November 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3790
5 August 2015 No fault found ADA2851
22 July 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2586

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 0AE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136289).

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.