How hard is it to get into The Sele School?

In the 2026 intake The Sele School received 45 first preferences and made 75 offers. That is 0.60 first preferences for every place. It describes demand. It does not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.

How are places at The Sele School allocated?

For the 2025 intake the last place at The Sele School was allocated on: Outside Priority Area, Distance.

Does The Sele School have a catchment area?

We hold no published admission zone for this school. That is not the same as an address being outside one. We cannot say either way.

The Sele School

Secondary school · Hertfordshire

Welwyn Road, Hertford, SG14 2DG

This school became an academy on 1 August 2012. Before that it was a community school, under its earlier school number, URN 117535.

First preferences per place, 2026 0.60
How many families named it first, for each place it gave out. Higher than 9% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.
Offers made, 2026 75
Places given out on offer day. Not the number of places the school had, which is not published per year group.
Latest Ofsted Not judged
Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), May 2025.

About the school

Type of school: Academy
Academy trust: The Sele School
Became an academy: 1 August 2012. Before that it was a community school, under its earlier school number, URN 117535.
Ages: 11 to 18
Boys or girls: Boys and girls
Sixth form: Yes
Website: http://www.sele.herts.sch.uk
Telephone: 01992 581455
School number (URN): 138484

From Get Information about Schools, retrieved 2 September 2026. Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.

How big the school is

In 2024 this school had 699 places and 392 children on roll.

307 places were unfilled, which is 44% of the school.

In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 419 children on roll on average, against 392 in 2024.

Places are the whole school added up, every year group together. That is not the number of places a school offers to new children in one year.

Source: Department for Education school capacity collection.

Children in each year group

As counted on one day in January 2026, the most recent school census. These are children, not places.

Children in each year group at The Sele School

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026.

Year group	Children
Year 7	60
Year 8	65
Year 9	82
Year 10	89
Year 11	74
Year 13	12

This is not a list of spare places. Places per year group are not published, and the count is from January. Children join and leave all year, so a year group that looked two under in January can be full by March.

If you are moving into the area and need a place during the school year, ask Hertfordshire. Councils handle applications made during the school year, including for schools that set their own admission rules. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.

Who decides who gets a place

This school sets its own admission rules, through its academy trust, rather than Hertfordshire setting them.

Look on the school's own website for its admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them. The council still takes the application.

Taken from the kind of school this is, as recorded by the Department for Education. We do not hold this school's rules themselves: a summary of an admission rule is not the rule, and only the admission authority's own published arrangements are binding.

How to apply

Applications for a place starting in September 2027 closed on 31 October 2026, unless your council set a later date.

That is a Saturday, and some councils accept applications until the next working day. Your council's website gives its own closing date.

Councils send every offer for secondary school places on the same day, 1 March 2027 or the next working day.

An application made after the closing date is what the rules call a late application. It is still a normal application and the council still handles it, but it is dealt with after the ones that arrived on time, so it does not get an answer on the day above.

You apply through the council where you live, even for a school in another area. You do not apply to the school. Find your council's secondary school application on GOV.UK.

If you live in Hertfordshire, the council's own page explains how to apply there. Hertfordshire school admissions.

To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Website: http://www.sele.herts.sch.uk. Telephone: 01992 581455.

Links and dates can change. Your council's own website has the final word. The dates are set nationally by the School Admissions Code 2021. GOV.UK link checked 23 September 2026. Hertfordshire's page checked 23 September 2026. Contact details from Get Information about Schools.

How many families applied

Preferences expressed and offers made at Year 7, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand, not whether a particular child would be offered a place.

In the 2026 intake, 45 families named The Sele School as their first preference, and the school made 75 offers.

That is 0.60 first preferences per place offered, higher than 9% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

Position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2026 intake.

Fewer first preferences per place. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.64 in 2022–2023 and 0.53 in 2025–2026.

First preferences for this school fell 29%, from 50 a year in 2022–2023 to 35 in 2025–2026. Across all 78 schools in Hertfordshire admitting at Year 7, first preferences changed little over the same years, from 15,120 to 14,743. The school also offered fewer places over these years, 78 a year in 2022–2023 and 65 in 2025–2026, which is why the figure per place can move the other way from the count of families.

Counts of families, not places.

Across Hertfordshire as a whole, 77.5% of families applying for a secondary place for September 2026 were offered their first choice, and 92.4% were offered one of the three schools they named. That is a figure for the council, not for this school. How the 2026 round went in Hertfordshire.

Compared with its own past

About the same number of families as its recent average put this school first.

In 2026, 45 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 42 a year.

In 2026, 168 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 235 a year.

In 2026, every family who put this school first was offered a place here (45 of 45). In 2021 to 2025 it was every family, every year.

In 2026, 2 of the 75 offers went to children living outside Hertfordshire. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 0 a year.

Each figure is compared only with the same figure at this school. "About the same" means within 10 in every 100 of the average.

First preferences and offers at Year 7

Families naming The Sele School first, against the offers it made, for every intake year held.

Source: Department for Education, school-level applications and offers. Preferences count families. Offers count places given out on offer day. The vertical axis does not start at zero.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 13 intake years
Intake	1st preferences1st choice	All preferencesAny choice	Offers madeOffers	1st prefs per placePer place
2026	45	168	75	0.60
2025	25	188	55	0.45
2024	34	192	82	0.41
2023	44	254	69	0.64
2022	55	276	86	0.64
2021	53	266	88	0.60
2020	44	282	85	0.52
2019	59	281	124	0.48
2018	52	235	72	0.72
2017	49	255	79	0.62
2016	38	257	54	0.70
2015	57	298	71	0.80
2014	58	296	71	0.82

“Offers made” is the number of offers on offer day, not the number of places the school has.

Source: Department for Education: school-level applications and offers, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

Where families put this school on their list

In 2026 this school made 75 offers: 45 to families who had named it first, 8 to families who named it second and 1 to a family who named it third.

21 offers went to families who named it fourth or lower, or who were admitted another way.

A school is not allowed to treat a family differently because of where it sat on their list. The School Admissions Code says an admission authority must not give extra priority to children whose parents rank preferred schools in a particular order.

The order is used at the end, by the council, and not by the school. Where more than one school could take a child, the council offers the one the family put highest.

Leaving the other boxes empty does not change how this school considers an application. If none of the schools a family names can offer a place, the council has to offer one at a school that has room, and that school may be further away.

Source: Department for Education school level applications and offers, and the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraphs 1.9 and 2.11.

Ofsted

Ofsted changed its inspection framework: the current one publishes several graded areas and no single overall grade, while the previous one published an overall effectiveness grade. Each inspection below states which framework produced it.

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 7 May 2025

Overall effectiveness: Not judged
Quality of education: Good
Behaviour and attitudes: Good
Personal development: Good
Leadership and management: Good
Sixth form / post-16: Good

Ofsted's report for this school

Source: Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

If you are refused a place

In 2026, families in Hertfordshire lodged 722 appeals about a secondary school place.

515 of them were heard by a panel and 92 succeeded, which is about 18 in every 100 heard.

The other 207 did not reach a panel. Most appeals that do not are withdrawn because a place comes up first.

This is a record of decisions already made. A panel hears one case at a time and decides it on what that family sets out, so these figures do not indicate what would happen in any particular appeal.

These count appeals about every school in Hertfordshire, not this school. Nobody publishes appeal figures school by school.

Source: Department for Education, admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026.

Waiting lists

Being refused a place does not end the application. Every admission authority has to keep a waiting list until at least 31 December of the school year the child would have started, and some keep them for longer.

A waiting list is not a queue. The rules say a child cannot be given priority for having joined it earlier, or for having applied earlier. The list is put back in order against the school's own admission rules every time a child is added, so a place can move further away as well as nearer.

Councils differ on whether a refused child goes onto the list automatically. The council that sent the refusal is the only place that can say which it does.

From the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraph 2.15.

Children with special educational needs

In January 2026, 31 of the 382 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 8 in every 100. Across schools in England the middle figure is 4 in every 100.

A further 93 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 24 in every 100, against a middle figure of 15 in every 100 across England.

A school named in a child's education, health and care plan has to admit that child. That duty holds even when the school is full, and it sits outside the rules that decide who gets a place when there are more children than places. Which school is named is decided with the council while the plan is being written, not through the normal application.

Source: Department for Education, special educational needs in England, January 2026 census.

Who goes to this school

In January 2026, 123 of the 382 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 32 in every 100.

More children are eligible here than at half of secondary schools in England, where the middle figure is 27 in every 100.

English was not the first language for 15 in every 100 children here. Across secondary schools the middle figure is 12 in every 100.

This describes the children who go to this school. It is not a measure of the school. Most children go to a school near home, so it is mostly a fact about the streets around it.

This matters when reading results. Across the 3,610 schools we hold 2024 key stage 4 results for, the fifth with the fewest eligible children averaged 81% getting grade 4 or above in English and maths. The fifth with the most averaged 35%.

Those are averages of many schools all over the country. This school's own results are further down this page exactly as published.

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026. Free school meal eligibility is counted for every pupil on roll.

Exam results

Published by the Department for Education for the whole year group. Figures for smaller cohorts are withheld by DfE to protect pupil privacy and appear here as a dash, not a zero.

Key stage 4: what these numbers are made of

Getting grade 4 or above in English and maths.

Across the 3 years published, this measure ran from 38.4% in 2024 to 57.3% in 2022, a difference of 18.9 points.

The year group had 73 children, so one child is worth about 1.4 percentage points and that difference is about 14 children.

Half of schools in England move by 6 points or more across the same three years.

Key stage 4 (GCSE)
Year	Attainment 8	Progress 8	Grade 4+ English & maths	EBacc grade 4+
2024/25	35.70	-	38.4%	6.8%
2023/24	41.30	-0.26 likely between -0.56 and 0.04	54.7%	10.5%
2022/23	40.60	-0.45 likely between -0.79 and -0.11	57.3%	10.7%

Progress 8 compares pupils here with pupils nationally who had similar results at the end of primary school; 0 is average. It is an estimate, and DfE publishes a range it is likely to fall within. Where that range spans zero, the school cannot be said to be above or below average.

Teachers staying and leaving

These come from the School Workforce Census, which follows each teacher into the next year. The numbers count full-time jobs, so a teacher who works half the week counts as half. They are not a count of people.

The share of teachers who left, each year

Counted as full-time jobs rather than people, and counting a move to another state school as leaving this one.

Source: Department for Education, School Workforce Census. The year shown is the census year; leaving is measured by where the teacher was a year later. A small school's figure moves a long way on one or two people.

Census year	Teachers (FTE)	Still there a year later	Moved to another state school	Left state schools	Left in total
2024/25	20.2	16.4	2.8	1.0	18.8%
2023/24	27.2	16.4	7.8	3.0	39.7%
2022/23	28.9	20.5	6.4	2.0	29.1%
2021/22	29.4	20.2	4.0	5.2	31.3%
2020/21	30.6	21.1	4.0	5.6	31.4%
2019/20	31.2	28.6	2.0	0.6	8.3%

This is turnover among teachers. It says nothing about the headteacher or the senior leadership team: DfE publishes leadership retention separately and we do not hold it by school.

Catchment area

Nobody publishes a catchment area map for this school that we can read. That does not mean an address is outside its area. It means we hold no map, so we cannot tell you either way.

How places were allocated

Hertfordshire publishes these figures on national offer day, the day families are told which school their child has been given. It is the only place that says how the school chose between the children who applied.

2025 intake

Places the school planned to fill: 90

Places offered: 70

More children wanted a place than there were places: no

The rule that decided the last place: Outside Priority Area, Distance

The child who lived furthest away and still got in lived: 8.81 miles away (14186 m) (every child who applied got a place, so this is not a cut-off)

Hertfordshire does not say whether it measures these across the map or along the route a child would walk, so neither do we.