School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Henley In Arden School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Henley In Arden School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 133 and 134 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

134 first preferences for 133 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Henley In Arden School

There is no published appeal success rate for Henley In Arden 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 Warwickshire 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 Warwickshire, 20.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 192 of 957 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 Warwickshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Warwickshire 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

Henley In Arden School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 4 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 Henley In Arden 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 0.69 per place 101 first choices 146 places 2016/17 0.7 per place 101 first choices 144 places 2017/18 0.83 per place 121 first choices 145 places 2018/19 0.69 per place 104 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 165 first choices 145 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 144 first choices 136 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 112 first choices 137 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 109 first choices 137 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 139 first choices 132 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 131 first choices 141 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 123 first choices 134 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 134 first choices 133 places
First preferences per place at Henley In Arden School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 134 first preferences for 133 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Henley In Arden School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 101 97 0.69
2016/17 144 101 101 0.7
2017/18 145 121 119 0.83
2018/19 150 104 104 0.69
2019/20 145 165 121 1.14
2020/21 136 144 102 1.06
2021/22 137 112 88 0.82
2022/23 137 109 81 0.8
2023/24 132 139 87 1.05
2024/25 141 131 103 0.93
2025/26 134 123 95 0.92
2026/27 133 134 98 1.01

Places offered

133

in 2026/27

Named first choice

134

418 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.1%

98 of 134

Offers to families outside the council

13%

17 of 133 offers

How close you had to live

Henley In Arden School filled its places in 2025, and 10,512m — 6.53 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the s9 - other children criterion.

Last place offered at

6.53 mi

10,512 metres, 2025

Under criterion

S9 - Other Children

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Warwickshire Council, allocation statistics for 2025. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

645

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

688

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

43

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 Henley In Arden 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 Henley In Arden 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Henley In Arden School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 645 places 627 on roll 2012/13 645 places 633 on roll 2013/14 615 places 620 on roll 2014/15 615 places 605 on roll 2015/16 640 places 582 on roll 2016/17 640 places 567 on roll 2017/18 640 places 566 on roll 2018/19 645 places 609 on roll 2020/21 645 places 659 on roll 2021/22 645 places 671 on roll 2022/23 645 places 688 on roll 2023/24 645 places 695 on roll 2024/25 645 places 688 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
Warwickshire

Postcode B95 6AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136991).

Other contested secondary schools in Warwickshire

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.