School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Featherstone High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Featherstone High School as their first choice did not get a place: 273 put it first and 259 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.

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

273 first preferences for 282 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Featherstone High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Featherstone 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

Featherstone High School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Featherstone 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 1.03 per place 246 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 291 first choices 264 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 292 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 285 first choices 269 places 2019/20 1.33 per place 370 first choices 279 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 317 first choices 280 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 349 first choices 274 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 275 first choices 279 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 305 first choices 280 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 273 first choices 280 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 297 first choices 279 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 273 first choices 282 places
First preferences per place at Featherstone High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 273 first preferences for 282 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Featherstone 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
2015/16 238 246 215 1.03
2016/17 264 291 236 1.1
2017/18 268 292 239 1.09
2018/19 269 285 241 1.06
2019/20 279 370 266 1.33
2020/21 280 317 254 1.13
2021/22 274 349 261 1.27
2022/23 279 275 252 0.99
2023/24 280 305 258 1.09
2024/25 280 273 255 0.97
2025/26 279 297 262 1.06
2026/27 282 273 259 0.97

Places offered

282

in 2026/27

Named first choice

273

563 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.9%

259 of 273

Offers to families outside the council

11%

30 of 275 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

1,392

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,392

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Featherstone 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 Featherstone 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Featherstone High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,627 places 1,499 on roll 2012/13 1,627 places 1,523 on roll 2013/14 1,627 places 1,500 on roll 2014/15 1,627 places 1,528 on roll 2015/16 1,627 places 1,557 on roll 2016/17 1,627 places 1,575 on roll 2017/18 1,750 places 1,613 on roll 2018/19 1,750 places 1,677 on roll 2020/21 1,750 places 1,760 on roll 2021/22 1,800 places 1,750 on roll 2022/23 1,800 places 1,779 on roll 2023/24 1,800 places 1,766 on roll 2024/25 1,792 places 1,770 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 UB2 5HF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137729).

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.