School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Elthorne Park High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Elthorne Park High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 291 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

291 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Elthorne Park High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Elthorne Park 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

Elthorne Park High 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 Elthorne Park 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 1.05 per place 188 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 249 first choices 240 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 252 first choices 234 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 300 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.4 per place 330 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.18 per place 283 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 279 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 278 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.32 per place 316 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.4 per place 336 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.25 per place 299 first choices 240 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 291 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Elthorne Park High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 291 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Elthorne Park 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
2015/16 179 188 148 1.05
2016/17 240 249 209 1.04
2017/18 234 252 212 1.08
2018/19 235 300 217 1.28
2019/20 236 330 216 1.4
2020/21 239 283 214 1.18
2021/22 235 279 208 1.19
2022/23 240 278 215 1.16
2023/24 240 316 219 1.32
2024/25 240 336 216 1.4
2025/26 240 299 222 1.25
2026/27 240 291 217 1.21

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

291

890 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.6%

217 of 291

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,214

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

14

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

322

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 Elthorne Park 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 Elthorne Park High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Elthorne Park High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 999 places 956 on roll 2010/11 1,028 places 1,020 on roll 2011/12 1,015 places 996 on roll 2012/13 1,110 places 979 on roll 2013/14 1,110 places 1,024 on roll 2014/15 1,105 places 1,053 on roll 2015/16 1,204 places 1,089 on roll 2016/17 1,260 places 1,167 on roll 2017/18 1,495 places 1,275 on roll 2018/19 1,487 places 1,368 on roll 2020/21 1,487 places 1,507 on roll 2021/22 1,487 places 1,532 on roll 2022/23 1,510 places 1,550 on roll 2023/24 1,510 places 1,563 on roll 2024/25 1,522 places 1,589 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Ealing

Postcode W7 2AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 131310).

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.