School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Drayton Manor High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Drayton Manor High School as their first choice did not get a place: 182 put it first and 157 of them were offered one.

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

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

182 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Drayton Manor High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Drayton Manor High 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 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

Drayton Manor High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 6 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 Drayton Manor High 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 1.17 per place 275 first choices 236 places 2016/17 1.47 per place 339 first choices 230 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 267 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 264 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 248 first choices 238 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 225 first choices 240 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 219 first choices 240 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 206 first choices 240 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 183 first choices 240 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 191 first choices 240 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 197 first choices 240 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 182 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Drayton Manor High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 182 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Drayton Manor High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 236 275 201 1.17
2016/17 230 339 210 1.47
2017/18 237 267 204 1.13
2018/19 240 264 210 1.1
2019/20 238 248 185 1.04
2020/21 240 225 187 0.94
2021/22 240 219 179 0.91
2022/23 240 206 172 0.86
2023/24 240 183 163 0.76
2024/25 240 191 172 0.8
2025/26 240 197 166 0.82
2026/27 240 182 157 0.76

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

182

910 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.3%

157 of 182

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 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

1,181

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,160

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

386

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 Drayton Manor High 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 Drayton Manor High School reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Drayton Manor High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,582 places 1,564 on roll 2012/13 1,582 places 1,593 on roll 2013/14 1,582 places 1,582 on roll 2014/15 1,582 places 1,544 on roll 2015/16 1,582 places 1,548 on roll 2016/17 1,582 places 1,541 on roll 2017/18 1,582 places 1,501 on roll 2018/19 1,582 places 1,482 on roll 2020/21 1,582 places 1,522 on roll 2021/22 1,582 places 1,525 on roll 2022/23 1,582 places 1,504 on roll 2023/24 1,582 places 1,423 on roll 2024/25 1,567 places 1,410 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
Ealing

Postcode W7 1EU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137221).

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.