School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hammersmith Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Hammersmith Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 102 put it first and 84 of them were offered one.

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

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

102 first preferences for 135 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hammersmith Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Hammersmith Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Hammersmith and Fulham 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 Hammersmith and Fulham, 8.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 16 of 188 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 Hammersmith and Fulham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hammersmith and Fulham 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

Hammersmith Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 2 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 Hammersmith Academy, 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 1.19 per place 140 first choices 118 places 2016/17 1.52 per place 179 first choices 118 places 2017/18 1.36 per place 171 first choices 126 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 164 first choices 140 places 2019/20 1.52 per place 191 first choices 126 places 2020/21 1.61 per place 201 first choices 125 places 2021/22 1.44 per place 180 first choices 125 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 166 first choices 126 places 2023/24 1.4 per place 189 first choices 135 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 134 first choices 135 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 143 first choices 131 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 102 first choices 135 places
First preferences per place at Hammersmith Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 102 first preferences for 135 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hammersmith Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 118 140 66 1.19
2016/17 118 179 79 1.52
2017/18 126 171 77 1.36
2018/19 140 164 73 1.17
2019/20 126 191 69 1.52
2020/21 125 201 77 1.61
2021/22 125 180 77 1.44
2022/23 126 166 91 1.32
2023/24 135 189 100 1.4
2024/25 135 134 84 0.99
2025/26 131 143 83 1.09
2026/27 135 102 84 0.76

Places offered

135

in 2026/27

Named first choice

102

494 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.4%

84 of 102

Offers to families outside the council

24%

32 of 135 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

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

710

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

245

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 Hammersmith Academy 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 Hammersmith Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hammersmith Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 780 places 227 on roll 2012/13 780 places 443 on roll 2013/14 780 places 560 on roll 2014/15 780 places 696 on roll 2015/16 780 places 741 on roll 2016/17 780 places 792 on roll 2017/18 780 places 824 on roll 2018/19 780 places 852 on roll 2020/21 840 places 937 on roll 2021/22 840 places 949 on roll 2022/23 840 places 925 on roll 2023/24 840 places 902 on roll 2024/25 945 places 950 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
Hammersmith and Fulham

Postcode W12 9JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136172).

Other contested secondary schools in Hammersmith and Fulham

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.