School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Highams Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Highams Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 231 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.

1.01

first choices for every place available

231 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Highams Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Highams Park 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 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

Highams Park School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Highams Park 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 1.19 per place 279 first choices 234 places 2016/17 1 per place 240 first choices 239 places 2017/18 0.76 per place 181 first choices 238 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 228 first choices 234 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 223 first choices 237 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 245 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 179 first choices 228 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 245 first choices 234 places 2023/24 1 per place 236 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 190 first choices 232 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 207 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 231 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Highams Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 231 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Highams Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 279 208 1.19
2016/17 239 240 206 1
2017/18 238 181 169 0.76
2018/19 234 228 192 0.97
2019/20 237 223 188 0.94
2020/21 238 245 214 1.03
2021/22 228 179 179 0.79
2022/23 234 245 192 1.05
2023/24 236 236 202 1
2024/25 232 190 175 0.82
2025/26 237 207 199 0.87
2026/27 229 231 195 1.01

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

231

736 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.4%

195 of 231

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 229 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

1,193

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

7

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

480

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 Highams Park 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 Highams Park School reported 7 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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 Highams Park School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,312 places 1,603 on roll 2012/13 1,560 places 1,575 on roll 2013/14 1,560 places 1,603 on roll 2014/15 1,560 places 1,545 on roll 2015/16 1,680 places 1,579 on roll 2016/17 1,680 places 1,546 on roll 2017/18 1,680 places 1,519 on roll 2018/19 1,680 places 1,477 on roll 2020/21 1,680 places 1,544 on roll 2021/22 1,680 places 1,548 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,529 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,531 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,539 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
Waltham Forest

Postcode E4 9PJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137558).

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.