School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodford County High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 175 families who named Woodford County High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 338 put it first.

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

1.90

first choices for every place available

338 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodford County High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodford 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

Woodford 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 Woodford 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 1.61 per place 192 first choices 119 places 2016/17 1.61 per place 288 first choices 179 places 2017/18 2.86 per place 514 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.94 per place 347 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.94 per place 348 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.97 per place 370 first choices 188 places 2021/22 2.48 per place 446 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.83 per place 330 first choices 180 places 2023/24 2.17 per place 377 first choices 174 places 2024/25 2.02 per place 366 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.98 per place 357 first choices 180 places 2026/27 1.9 per place 338 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Woodford County High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 338 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodford 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
2015/16 119 192 111 1.61
2016/17 179 288 153 1.61
2017/18 180 514 150 2.86
2018/19 179 347 147 1.94
2019/20 179 348 149 1.94
2020/21 188 370 176 1.97
2021/22 180 446 167 2.48
2022/23 180 330 164 1.83
2023/24 174 377 155 2.17
2024/25 181 366 168 2.02
2025/26 180 357 163 1.98
2026/27 178 338 163 1.9

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

338

534 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.2%

163 of 338

Offers to families outside the council

24%

42 of 178 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

901

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Woodford 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 Woodford County 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Woodford 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 2009/10 842 places 855 on roll 2010/11 842 places 853 on roll 2011/12 842 places 864 on roll 2012/13 852 places 877 on roll 2013/14 852 places 875 on roll 2014/15 852 places 887 on roll 2015/16 852 places 907 on roll 2016/17 912 places 966 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,027 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,096 on roll 2020/21 1,220 places 1,210 on roll 2021/22 1,220 places 1,235 on roll 2022/23 1,220 places 1,240 on roll 2023/24 1,220 places 1,238 on roll 2024/25 1,220 places 1,244 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. Woodford County High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Woodford County High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 August 2021 No fault found ADA3772

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 IG8 9LA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102852).

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.