School admission appeals in Hammersmith and Fulham
Hammersmith and Fulham heard 59 school admission appeals in 2026, and 8 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Hammersmith and Fulham as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Hammersmith and Fulham success rate has run 11.3 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Hammersmith and Fulham were upheld
16 of 197 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
68
by parents in Hammersmith and Fulham
Appeals heard by a panel
59
87% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
8
13.6% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
Some primary appeals in Hammersmith and Fulham are infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
Too few were heard in Hammersmith and Fulham to publish a local rate; across England the figure is 9.4%. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Hammersmith and Fulham
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Hammersmith and Fulham rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Hammersmith and Fulham
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 188 | 16 | 8.5% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 9 | 0 | too few | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 7 | 0 | too few | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Hammersmith and Fulham, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Hammersmith and Fulham | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 159 | 12 | 7.5% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 196 | 13 | 6.6% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 177 | 9 | 5.1% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 142 | 7 | 4.9% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 127 | 13 | 10.2% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 78 | 4 | 5.1% | 19% |
| 2022 | 93 | 5 | 5.4% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 67 | 7 | 10.4% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 76 | 6 | 7.9% | 20% |
| 2025 | 62 | 2 | 3.2% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 59 | 8 | 13.6% | 18.5% |
How Hammersmith and Fulham compares
Success rate ranking
133 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
128 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 197 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Hammersmith and Fulham
Hammersmith and Fulham has 47 state-funded mainstream schools — 36 primary and 11 secondary. The largest concentrations are in London and Fulham.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Hammersmith and Fulham schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 7 secondary and 15 primary schools in Hammersmith and Fulham →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lady Margaret School | 118 | 310 | 2.63 |
| West London Free School | 130 | 240 | 1.85 |
| The London Oratory School | 157 | 226 | 1.44 |
| The Fulham Boys School | 122 | 154 | 1.26 |
| Sacred Heart High School | 195 | 199 | 1.02 |
| The Hurlingham Academy | 134 | 125 | 0.93 |
| Hammersmith Academy | 135 | 102 | 0.76 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Betts Primary School | 29 | 69 | 2.38 |
| St John's Walham Green Church of England Primary School | 60 | 115 | 1.92 |
| St Stephen's CofE Primary School | 59 | 99 | 1.68 |
| St Peter's Primary School | 29 | 48 | 1.66 |
| Good Shepherd RC Primary School | 29 | 39 | 1.34 |
| West London Free School Primary | 60 | 78 | 1.30 |
| St John XXIII Catholic Primary School | 29 | 36 | 1.24 |
| Ark Conway Primary Academy | 30 | 34 | 1.13 |
| Larmenier & Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School | 60 | 68 | 1.13 |
| Fulham Primary School | 30 | 32 | 1.07 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Hammersmith and Fulham
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 11 objections about schools in Hammersmith and Fulham, and found the arrangements did not comply in 8.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| All community and voluntary controlled schools in Hammersmith and Fulham | 27 June 2024 | Did not comply |
| Sacred Heart High School | 16 August 2023 | Complied |
| Sacred Heart High School Hammersmith | 16 September 2019 | Did not comply |
| The Fulham Boys School | 5 July 2018 | Did not comply |
| The London Oratory School | 23 August 2017 | Complied |
| The London Oratory School | 19 June 2015 | Complied |
| Sacred Heart High School | 23 February 2015 | Did not comply |
| The London Oratory School | 15 July 2014 | Did not comply |
| The London Oratory School | 12 December 2012 | Did not comply |
| West London Free School | 22 August 2012 | Did not comply |
Hammersmith and Fulham does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.