School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hayes School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 88 families who named Hayes School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 306 put it first.

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

1.27

first choices for every place available

306 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hayes School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hayes 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 Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Hayes 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 Hayes 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 1.38 per place 332 first choices 240 places 2016/17 1.43 per place 332 first choices 232 places 2017/18 1.45 per place 347 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 322 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 329 first choices 250 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 311 first choices 253 places 2021/22 1.26 per place 310 first choices 246 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 323 first choices 245 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 310 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.45 per place 341 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1.55 per place 354 first choices 228 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 306 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Hayes School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 306 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hayes School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 332 227 1.38
2016/17 232 332 221 1.43
2017/18 240 347 225 1.45
2018/19 240 322 228 1.34
2019/20 250 329 243 1.32
2020/21 253 311 239 1.23
2021/22 246 310 227 1.26
2022/23 245 323 230 1.32
2023/24 240 310 222 1.29
2024/25 235 341 220 1.45
2025/26 228 354 217 1.55
2026/27 240 306 218 1.27

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

306

1,676 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.2%

218 of 306

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 240 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

1,383

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,241

89.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

142

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

500

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 Hayes 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 Hayes School reported 142 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.7% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hayes School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,602 places 1,609 on roll 2011/12 1,602 places 1,627 on roll 2012/13 1,602 places 1,638 on roll 2013/14 1,602 places 1,643 on roll 2014/15 1,602 places 1,681 on roll 2015/16 1,602 places 1,709 on roll 2016/17 1,602 places 1,666 on roll 2017/18 1,602 places 1,693 on roll 2018/19 1,602 places 1,701 on roll 2020/21 1,700 places 1,723 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,703 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,715 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,756 on roll 2024/25 1,883 places 1,756 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
Bromley

Postcode BR2 7DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136644).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.