School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Leigh Academy Halley?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named Leigh Academy Halley as their first choice did not get a place: 93 put it first and 58 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Greenwich actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

35

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

93 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Leigh Academy Halley

There is no published appeal success rate for Leigh Academy Halley, 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

Leigh Academy Halley turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 9 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Leigh Academy Halley, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.14 per place 32 first choices 234 places 2019/20 0.23 per place 55 first choices 235 places 2020/21 0.23 per place 52 first choices 228 places 2021/22 0.25 per place 60 first choices 237 places 2022/23 0.19 per place 43 first choices 230 places 2023/24 0.35 per place 60 first choices 172 places 2024/25 0.29 per place 57 first choices 196 places 2025/26 0.5 per place 82 first choices 165 places 2026/27 0.55 per place 93 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Leigh Academy Halley. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 93 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Leigh Academy Halley, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 234 32 32 0.14
2019/20 235 55 55 0.23
2020/21 228 52 52 0.23
2021/22 237 60 60 0.25
2022/23 230 43 43 0.19
2023/24 172 60 60 0.35
2024/25 196 57 57 0.29
2025/26 165 82 71 0.5
2026/27 168 93 58 0.55

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

93

521 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.4%

58 of 93

Offers to families outside the council

6%

10 of 168 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

1,229

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

840

68.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

389

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Leigh Academy Halley 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 Leigh Academy Halley reported 389 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 68.3% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Leigh Academy Halley from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,479 places 1,092 on roll 2018/19 1,479 places 1,003 on roll 2020/21 1,479 places 906 on roll 2021/22 1,479 places 894 on roll 2022/23 1,479 places 867 on roll 2023/24 1,479 places 915 on roll 2024/25 1,479 places 959 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
Greenwich

Postcode SE3 8EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145315).

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.