School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Eltham Hill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 86 families who named Eltham Hill School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 217 and 259 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

259 first preferences for 217 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Eltham Hill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Eltham Hill 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 Greenwich 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 Greenwich, 6.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 39 of 617 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 Greenwich.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Greenwich 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

Eltham Hill School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 3 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 Eltham Hill 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 0.9 per place 189 first choices 209 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 195 first choices 236 places 2017/18 1.63 per place 292 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.42 per place 251 first choices 177 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 255 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 228 first choices 204 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 130 first choices 210 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 199 first choices 209 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 295 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 263 first choices 221 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 280 first choices 213 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 259 first choices 217 places
First preferences per place at Eltham Hill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 259 first preferences for 217 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Eltham Hill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 189 136 0.9
2016/17 236 195 156 0.83
2017/18 179 292 134 1.63
2018/19 177 251 124 1.42
2019/20 175 255 137 1.46
2020/21 204 228 158 1.12
2021/22 210 130 118 0.62
2022/23 209 199 144 0.95
2023/24 219 295 184 1.35
2024/25 221 263 174 1.19
2025/26 213 280 174 1.31
2026/27 217 259 173 1.19

Places offered

217

in 2026/27

Named first choice

259

790 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.8%

173 of 259

Offers to families outside the council

24%

51 of 217 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

1,123

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,058

94.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

65

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

150

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 Eltham Hill 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 Eltham Hill School reported 65 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Eltham Hill School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,113 places 935 on roll 2010/11 1,113 places 864 on roll 2011/12 1,113 places 804 on roll 2012/13 1,113 places 781 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 819 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 883 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,015 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,146 on roll 2017/18 1,049 places 1,128 on roll 2018/19 1,049 places 1,114 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,159 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,166 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,226 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,258 on roll 2024/25 1,273 places 1,299 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
Greenwich

Postcode SE9 5EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100182).

Other contested secondary schools in Greenwich

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.