School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The John Roan School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named The John Roan School as their first choice did not get a place: 118 put it first and 93 of them were offered one.

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

25

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

118 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The John Roan School

There is no published appeal success rate for The John Roan 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

The John Roan School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 6 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 The John Roan 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 0.93 per place 186 first choices 201 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 224 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 176 first choices 204 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 187 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.35 per place 70 first choices 202 places 2020/21 0.39 per place 74 first choices 191 places 2021/22 0.34 per place 69 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.43 per place 88 first choices 206 places 2023/24 0.6 per place 101 first choices 169 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 140 first choices 167 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 168 first choices 166 places 2026/27 0.69 per place 118 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at The John Roan School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 118 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The John Roan School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 201 186 134 0.93
2016/17 208 224 154 1.08
2017/18 204 176 132 0.86
2018/19 207 187 128 0.9
2019/20 202 70 70 0.35
2020/21 191 74 74 0.39
2021/22 205 69 68 0.34
2022/23 206 88 88 0.43
2023/24 169 101 83 0.6
2024/25 167 140 111 0.84
2025/26 166 168 105 1.01
2026/27 170 118 93 0.69

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

118

593 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.8%

93 of 118

Offers to families outside the council

14%

23 of 170 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 100192.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

918

87.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

132

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

302

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 The John Roan 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 The John Roan School reported 132 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.4% 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 The John Roan School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,212 places 1,168 on roll 2010/11 1,212 places 1,202 on roll 2011/12 1,212 places 1,177 on roll 2012/13 1,212 places 1,149 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,157 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,259 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,287 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,234 on roll 2017/18 1,352 places 1,204 on roll 2018/19 1,352 places 1,207 on roll 2020/21 1,352 places 1,075 on roll 2021/22 1,352 places 1,055 on roll 2022/23 1,352 places 1,132 on roll 2023/24 1,352 places 1,136 on roll 2024/25 1,352 places 1,149 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 7QR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147439).

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.