School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ark Soane Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Ark Soane Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 151 put it first and 115 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Ealing actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 5 years of official figures.

36

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

151 first preferences for 189 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ark Soane Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ark Soane Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Ealing 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 Ealing, 18.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 110 of 587 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 Ealing.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Ealing 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

Ark Soane Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 5 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Ark Soane Academy, 2022/23 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 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2022/23 0.45 per place 81 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.66 per place 119 first choices 179 places 2024/25 0.52 per place 92 first choices 176 places 2025/26 0.61 per place 119 first choices 195 places 2026/27 0.8 per place 151 first choices 189 places
First preferences per place at Ark Soane Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 151 first preferences for 189 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ark Soane Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2022/23 180 81 81 0.45
2023/24 179 119 113 0.66
2024/25 176 92 91 0.52
2025/26 195 119 113 0.61
2026/27 189 151 115 0.8

Places offered

189

in 2026/27

Named first choice

151

510 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.2%

115 of 151

Offers to families outside the council

6%

11 of 181 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

717

79.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

183

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Ark Soane Academy 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 Ark Soane Academy reported 183 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.7% 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, 2021/22 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ark Soane Academy from 2021/22 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2021/22 1,200 places 178 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 348 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 530 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 717 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Ealing

Postcode W3 8EA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147863).

Other contested secondary schools in Ealing

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.