School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Haggerston School?

In 2026/27, Haggerston School offered 131 places and 62 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.47

first choices for every place available

62 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Haggerston School

There is no published appeal success rate for Haggerston 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 Hackney 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 Hackney, 8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 311 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 Hackney.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hackney 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

Haggerston School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 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 Haggerston 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 0.5 per place 63 first choices 127 places 2016/17 0.54 per place 83 first choices 155 places 2017/18 0.43 per place 64 first choices 150 places 2018/19 0.4 per place 76 first choices 188 places 2019/20 0.42 per place 98 first choices 232 places 2020/21 0.45 per place 89 first choices 200 places 2021/22 0.6 per place 105 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 128 first choices 177 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 151 first choices 175 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 157 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.75 per place 129 first choices 171 places 2026/27 0.47 per place 62 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at Haggerston School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 62 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Haggerston School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 127 63 63 0.5
2016/17 155 83 83 0.54
2017/18 150 64 64 0.43
2018/19 188 76 76 0.4
2019/20 232 98 98 0.42
2020/21 200 89 87 0.45
2021/22 174 105 102 0.6
2022/23 177 128 112 0.72
2023/24 175 151 119 0.86
2024/25 175 157 129 0.9
2025/26 171 129 116 0.75
2026/27 131 62 62 0.47

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

62

598 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

62 of 62

Offers to families outside the council

34%

43 of 128 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 100277.

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

1,018

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

859

84.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

159

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 Haggerston 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 Haggerston School reported 159 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.4% 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 Haggerston School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 942 places 721 on roll 2010/11 942 places 770 on roll 2011/12 942 places 873 on roll 2012/13 1,019 places 937 on roll 2013/14 1,066 places 957 on roll 2014/15 1,066 places 1,006 on roll 2015/16 1,019 places 962 on roll 2016/17 1,003 places 944 on roll 2017/18 994 places 869 on roll 2018/19 994 places 922 on roll 2020/21 1,019 places 1,021 on roll 2021/22 1,019 places 1,024 on roll 2022/23 1,019 places 1,050 on roll 2023/24 1,168 places 1,055 on roll 2024/25 1,168 places 1,000 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hackney

Postcode E2 8LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149901).

Other contested secondary schools in Hackney

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.