School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Heathcote School & Science College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Heathcote School & Science College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 171 and 196 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

196 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Heathcote School & Science College

There is no published appeal success rate for Heathcote School & Science 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 Waltham Forest 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 Waltham Forest, 11.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 235 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 Waltham Forest.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Waltham Forest 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

Heathcote School & Science College turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Heathcote School & Science 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 0.65 per place 115 first choices 177 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 157 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.65 per place 123 first choices 189 places 2018/19 0.61 per place 113 first choices 185 places 2019/20 0.55 per place 109 first choices 200 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 124 first choices 160 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 134 first choices 158 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 183 first choices 172 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 191 first choices 168 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 216 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 196 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 196 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at Heathcote School & Science College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 196 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Heathcote School & Science College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 115 103 0.65
2016/17 175 157 153 0.9
2017/18 189 123 123 0.65
2018/19 185 113 113 0.61
2019/20 200 109 109 0.55
2020/21 160 124 124 0.78
2021/22 158 134 134 0.85
2022/23 172 183 148 1.06
2023/24 168 191 150 1.14
2024/25 174 216 165 1.24
2025/26 175 196 172 1.12
2026/27 171 196 153 1.15

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

196

562 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.1%

153 of 196

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 171 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

878

73.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

322

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Heathcote School & Science 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 Heathcote School & Science College reported 322 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 73.2% 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 Heathcote School & Science College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 890 on roll 2010/11 900 places 909 on roll 2011/12 990 places 990 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,079 on roll 2013/14 1,140 places 1,131 on roll 2014/15 1,140 places 1,112 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 1,115 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 1,116 on roll 2017/18 1,450 places 1,112 on roll 2018/19 1,450 places 1,132 on roll 2020/21 1,450 places 1,079 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,075 on roll 2022/23 1,450 places 1,105 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,117 on roll 2024/25 1,450 places 1,105 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. Heathcote School & Science College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Heathcote School & Science College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
29 May 2020 No fault found VAR931

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Waltham Forest

Postcode E4 6ES. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103097).

Other contested secondary schools in Waltham Forest

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.