School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Denbigh High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 222 families who named Denbigh High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 426 put it first.

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

2.05

first choices for every place available

426 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Denbigh High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Denbigh 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 Luton 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 Luton, 10.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 63 of 579 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 Luton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Luton 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

Denbigh High School 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 Denbigh High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 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 1.42 per place 312 first choices 220 places 2016/17 1.84 per place 399 first choices 217 places 2017/18 2.07 per place 462 first choices 223 places 2018/19 2.25 per place 475 first choices 211 places 2019/20 2.2 per place 483 first choices 220 places 2020/21 2.17 per place 468 first choices 216 places 2021/22 1.9 per place 406 first choices 214 places 2022/23 2.09 per place 443 first choices 212 places 2023/24 2.09 per place 442 first choices 211 places 2024/25 2 per place 423 first choices 211 places 2025/26 1.77 per place 377 first choices 213 places 2026/27 2.05 per place 426 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at Denbigh High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 426 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Denbigh 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
2015/16 220 312 211 1.42
2016/17 217 399 212 1.84
2017/18 223 462 221 2.07
2018/19 211 475 208 2.25
2019/20 220 483 214 2.2
2020/21 216 468 210 2.17
2021/22 214 406 202 1.9
2022/23 212 443 204 2.09
2023/24 211 442 198 2.09
2024/25 211 423 203 2
2025/26 213 377 202 1.77
2026/27 208 426 204 2.05

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

426

1,007 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

47.9%

204 of 426

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 208 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

1,121

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Denbigh 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 Denbigh High 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Denbigh High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,120 places 1,118 on roll 2011/12 1,120 places 1,119 on roll 2012/13 1,120 places 1,120 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 1,122 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 1,118 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 1,126 on roll 2016/17 1,120 places 1,123 on roll 2017/18 1,120 places 1,130 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 1,123 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,119 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,117 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,124 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,115 on roll 2024/25 1,120 places 1,121 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
Luton

Postcode LU3 1HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136319).

Other contested secondary schools in Luton

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.