School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Yavneh College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named Yavneh College as their first choice did not get a place: 145 put it first and 139 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.

6

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

145 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Yavneh College

There is no published appeal success rate for Yavneh College, 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

Yavneh College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 Yavneh College, 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 1.32 per place 195 first choices 148 places 2016/17 1.5 per place 221 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 192 first choices 149 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 211 first choices 146 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 180 first choices 143 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 157 first choices 141 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 155 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 138 first choices 140 places 2023/24 1.08 per place 189 first choices 175 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 146 first choices 145 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 177 first choices 173 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 145 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Yavneh College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 145 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Yavneh College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 148 195 138 1.32
2016/17 147 221 140 1.5
2017/18 149 192 137 1.29
2018/19 146 211 141 1.45
2019/20 143 180 139 1.26
2020/21 141 157 124 1.11
2021/22 174 155 143 0.89
2022/23 140 138 124 0.99
2023/24 175 189 153 1.08
2024/25 145 146 129 1.01
2025/26 173 177 157 1.02
2026/27 175 145 139 0.83

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

145

359 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.9%

139 of 145

Offers to families outside the council

18%

31 of 175 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

795

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

812

102.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

17

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 Yavneh College 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 Yavneh College 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Yavneh College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,000 places 779 on roll 2012/13 1,000 places 841 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 882 on roll 2014/15 1,040 places 915 on roll 2015/16 1,040 places 932 on roll 2016/17 950 places 965 on roll 2017/18 950 places 967 on roll 2018/19 1,010 places 979 on roll 2020/21 1,035 places 1,051 on roll 2021/22 1,035 places 1,060 on roll 2022/23 1,035 places 1,067 on roll 2023/24 1,035 places 1,078 on roll 2024/25 1,035 places 1,050 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. Yavneh College has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Yavneh College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
31 August 2021 No fault found ADA3796
26 September 2016 Arrangements did not comply Read the determination
2 September 2015 No fault found ADA2935

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 WD6 1HL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136922).

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.