School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 139 families who named St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 128 and 257 put it first.

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

2.01

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 128 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar 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

St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar 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 St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.8 per place 229 first choices 127 places 2016/17 2.28 per place 292 first choices 128 places 2017/18 2.05 per place 262 first choices 128 places 2018/19 1.83 per place 238 first choices 130 places 2019/20 2.11 per place 270 first choices 128 places 2020/21 1.87 per place 239 first choices 128 places 2021/22 3.28 per place 403 first choices 123 places 2022/23 1.69 per place 216 first choices 128 places 2023/24 1.77 per place 226 first choices 128 places 2024/25 1.97 per place 248 first choices 126 places 2025/26 2.07 per place 261 first choices 126 places 2026/27 2.01 per place 257 first choices 128 places
First preferences per place at St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 128 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 127 229 125 1.8
2016/17 128 292 122 2.28
2017/18 128 262 119 2.05
2018/19 130 238 119 1.83
2019/20 128 270 119 2.11
2020/21 128 239 121 1.87
2021/22 123 403 115 3.28
2022/23 128 216 111 1.69
2023/24 128 226 110 1.77
2024/25 126 248 107 1.97
2025/26 126 261 111 2.07
2026/27 128 257 118 2.01

Places offered

128

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

473 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

45.9%

118 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

62%

79 of 128 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

713

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

639

89.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

74

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

442

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 St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar 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 St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School reported 74 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.6% 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 St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 838 places 953 on roll 2010/11 838 places 958 on roll 2011/12 838 places 966 on roll 2012/13 838 places 974 on roll 2013/14 838 places 955 on roll 2014/15 838 places 1,011 on roll 2015/16 838 places 1,062 on roll 2016/17 838 places 1,056 on roll 2017/18 838 places 1,068 on roll 2018/19 1,097 places 1,092 on roll 2020/21 1,097 places 1,075 on roll 2021/22 1,097 places 1,088 on roll 2022/23 1,097 places 1,087 on roll 2023/24 1,097 places 1,085 on roll 2024/25 1,155 places 1,085 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. St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
27 October 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3766

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bromley

Postcode BR6 9SH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101676).

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.