School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lift Greensward?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Lift Greensward as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 266 and 266 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

266 first preferences for 266 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lift Greensward

There is no published appeal success rate for Lift Greensward, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Essex 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 Essex, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 249 of 1,651 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 Essex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Essex 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

Lift Greensward turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Lift Greensward, 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 0.86 per place 194 first choices 226 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 181 first choices 211 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 203 first choices 219 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 225 first choices 266 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 242 first choices 265 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 256 first choices 268 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 263 first choices 269 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 258 first choices 268 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 219 first choices 242 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 288 first choices 267 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 288 first choices 266 places 2026/27 1 per place 266 first choices 266 places
First preferences per place at Lift Greensward. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 266 first preferences for 266 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lift Greensward, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 226 194 193 0.86
2016/17 211 181 179 0.86
2017/18 219 203 188 0.93
2018/19 266 225 217 0.85
2019/20 265 242 228 0.91
2020/21 268 256 238 0.96
2021/22 269 263 239 0.98
2022/23 268 258 255 0.96
2023/24 242 219 219 0.9
2024/25 267 288 249 1.08
2025/26 266 288 242 1.08
2026/27 266 266 243 1

Places offered

266

in 2026/27

Named first choice

266

701 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.4%

243 of 266

Offers to families outside the council

9%

23 of 266 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,338

99.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

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 Lift Greensward 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 Lift Greensward reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lift Greensward from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,650 places 1,581 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 1,597 on roll 2011/12 1,650 places 1,581 on roll 2012/13 1,650 places 1,558 on roll 2013/14 1,650 places 1,514 on roll 2014/15 1,650 places 1,462 on roll 2015/16 1,650 places 1,436 on roll 2016/17 1,650 places 1,378 on roll 2017/18 1,650 places 1,348 on roll 2018/19 1,650 places 1,391 on roll 2020/21 1,650 places 1,524 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,553 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,559 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,579 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,613 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode SS5 5HG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135652).

Other contested secondary schools in Essex

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.