School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ilford County High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 110 families who named Ilford County High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 258 put it first.

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

1.44

first choices for every place available

258 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ilford County High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ilford County 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 Redbridge 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 Redbridge, 7.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 45 of 567 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 Redbridge.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Redbridge 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

Ilford County 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 Ilford County High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.91 per place 229 first choices 120 places 2016/17 1.71 per place 308 first choices 180 places 2017/18 2.7 per place 484 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.91 per place 344 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.59 per place 285 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.59 per place 288 first choices 181 places 2021/22 2.63 per place 471 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.52 per place 276 first choices 181 places 2023/24 1.68 per place 293 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 259 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.79 per place 319 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.44 per place 258 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Ilford County High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 258 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ilford County 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
2015/16 120 229 113 1.91
2016/17 180 308 160 1.71
2017/18 179 484 166 2.7
2018/19 180 344 151 1.91
2019/20 179 285 140 1.59
2020/21 181 288 140 1.59
2021/22 179 471 143 2.63
2022/23 181 276 152 1.52
2023/24 174 293 153 1.68
2024/25 180 259 159 1.44
2025/26 178 319 155 1.79
2026/27 179 258 148 1.44

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

258

538 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

57.4%

148 of 258

Offers to families outside the council

24%

43 of 179 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

912

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

896

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

360

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 Ilford County 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 Ilford County High School reported 16 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ilford County High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 820 places 862 on roll 2010/11 840 places 876 on roll 2011/12 840 places 899 on roll 2012/13 909 places 922 on roll 2013/14 909 places 947 on roll 2014/15 909 places 932 on roll 2015/16 909 places 937 on roll 2016/17 969 places 994 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,017 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,040 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,109 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,145 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,185 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,137 on roll 2024/25 1,272 places 1,125 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. Ilford County High School 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 Ilford County High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2020 No fault found ADA3667
17 January 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3527
18 May 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2842

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
Community school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Redbridge

Postcode IG6 2JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102850).

Other contested secondary schools in Redbridge

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.