School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Barnhill Community High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 182 families who named Barnhill Community High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 227 and 387 put it first.

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

1.70

first choices for every place available

387 first preferences for 227 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Barnhill Community High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Barnhill Community High 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 326 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 Hillingdon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hillingdon 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

Barnhill Community High School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Barnhill Community High 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 0.8 per place 194 first choices 241 places 2016/17 0.74 per place 171 first choices 232 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 167 first choices 235 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 169 first choices 228 places 2019/20 0.57 per place 134 first choices 236 places 2020/21 0.69 per place 175 first choices 252 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 203 first choices 237 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 219 first choices 231 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 255 first choices 267 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 263 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.61 per place 376 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.7 per place 387 first choices 227 places
First preferences per place at Barnhill Community High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 387 first preferences for 227 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Barnhill Community High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 241 194 188 0.8
2016/17 232 171 167 0.74
2017/18 235 167 166 0.71
2018/19 228 169 169 0.74
2019/20 236 134 134 0.57
2020/21 252 175 173 0.69
2021/22 237 203 178 0.86
2022/23 231 219 190 0.95
2023/24 267 255 223 0.96
2024/25 234 263 208 1.12
2025/26 234 376 215 1.61
2026/27 227 387 205 1.7

Places offered

227

in 2026/27

Named first choice

387

928 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

53%

205 of 387

Offers to families outside the council

23%

52 of 227 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

1,312

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,256

95.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

56

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

228

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 Barnhill Community High 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 Barnhill Community High School reported 56 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Barnhill Community High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,428 places 1,375 on roll 2012/13 1,428 places 1,411 on roll 2013/14 1,428 places 1,425 on roll 2014/15 1,428 places 1,406 on roll 2015/16 1,428 places 1,395 on roll 2016/17 1,428 places 1,373 on roll 2017/18 1,428 places 1,400 on roll 2018/19 1,428 places 1,432 on roll 2020/21 1,428 places 1,508 on roll 2021/22 1,428 places 1,526 on roll 2022/23 1,428 places 1,521 on roll 2023/24 1,422 places 1,576 on roll 2024/25 1,540 places 1,568 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hillingdon

Postcode UB4 9LE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137844).

Other contested secondary schools in Hillingdon

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.