School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Greenford High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 45 families who named Greenford High School as their first choice did not get a place: 249 put it first and 204 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.

45

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

249 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Greenford High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Greenford 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

Greenford High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 2 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 Greenford 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 1.83 per place 448 first choices 245 places 2016/17 1.83 per place 448 first choices 245 places 2017/18 1.94 per place 480 first choices 248 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 417 first choices 288 places 2019/20 1.49 per place 438 first choices 293 places 2020/21 1.37 per place 399 first choices 292 places 2021/22 1.35 per place 406 first choices 300 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 338 first choices 293 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 311 first choices 300 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 291 first choices 300 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 307 first choices 300 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 249 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at Greenford High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 249 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Greenford 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
2015/16 245 448 216 1.83
2016/17 245 448 216 1.83
2017/18 248 480 219 1.94
2018/19 288 417 238 1.45
2019/20 293 438 258 1.49
2020/21 292 399 246 1.37
2021/22 300 406 251 1.35
2022/23 293 338 246 1.15
2023/24 300 311 245 1.04
2024/25 300 291 242 0.97
2025/26 300 307 250 1.02
2026/27 270 249 204 0.92

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

249

914 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.9%

204 of 249

Offers to families outside the council

5%

12 of 258 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,505

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

5

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

795

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 Greenford 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 Greenford 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 Greenford High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,150 2,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,578 places 1,740 on roll 2010/11 1,903 places 1,754 on roll 2011/12 1,934 places 1,812 on roll 2012/13 1,984 places 1,827 on roll 2013/14 1,889 places 1,766 on roll 2014/15 1,786 places 1,802 on roll 2015/16 1,822 places 1,789 on roll 2016/17 1,798 places 1,744 on roll 2017/18 1,791 places 1,734 on roll 2018/19 2,244 places 1,785 on roll 2020/21 2,210 places 1,885 on roll 2021/22 2,210 places 1,923 on roll 2022/23 2,295 places 1,945 on roll 2023/24 2,295 places 2,002 on roll 2024/25 2,295 places 2,008 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Ealing

Postcode UB1 2GU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101940).

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.