School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lady Margaret School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 200 families who named Lady Margaret School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 118 and 310 put it first.

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

2.63

first choices for every place available

310 first preferences for 118 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lady Margaret School

There is no published appeal success rate for Lady Margaret 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 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

Lady Margaret School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Lady Margaret School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.41 per place 282 first choices 117 places 2016/17 2.75 per place 325 first choices 118 places 2017/18 2.6 per place 317 first choices 122 places 2018/19 2.44 per place 290 first choices 119 places 2019/20 2.43 per place 287 first choices 118 places 2020/21 2.79 per place 329 first choices 118 places 2021/22 1.95 per place 230 first choices 118 places 2022/23 1.95 per place 228 first choices 117 places 2023/24 2.11 per place 251 first choices 119 places 2024/25 2.42 per place 281 first choices 116 places 2025/26 2.74 per place 321 first choices 117 places 2026/27 2.63 per place 310 first choices 118 places
First preferences per place at Lady Margaret School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 310 first preferences for 118 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lady Margaret School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 117 282 105 2.41
2016/17 118 325 107 2.75
2017/18 122 317 110 2.6
2018/19 119 290 104 2.44
2019/20 118 287 107 2.43
2020/21 118 329 114 2.79
2021/22 118 230 109 1.95
2022/23 117 228 102 1.95
2023/24 119 251 110 2.11
2024/25 116 281 107 2.42
2025/26 117 321 108 2.74
2026/27 118 310 110 2.63

Places offered

118

in 2026/27

Named first choice

310

730 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

35.5%

110 of 310

Offers to families outside the council

39%

46 of 118 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

540

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

600

111.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

60

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Lady Margaret 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 Lady Margaret School 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lady Margaret School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 651 places 720 on roll 2013/14 667 places 698 on roll 2014/15 667 places 715 on roll 2015/16 667 places 754 on roll 2016/17 667 places 736 on roll 2017/18 667 places 730 on roll 2018/19 667 places 758 on roll 2020/21 780 places 772 on roll 2021/22 780 places 781 on roll 2022/23 780 places 761 on roll 2023/24 780 places 757 on roll 2024/25 780 places 782 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hammersmith and Fulham

Postcode SW6 4UN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138607).

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.