School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sacred Heart High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Sacred Heart High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 195 and 199 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.

1.02

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 195 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sacred Heart High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sacred Heart High 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

Sacred Heart High 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 Sacred Heart High 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 1.94 per place 314 first choices 162 places 2016/17 1.55 per place 300 first choices 193 places 2017/18 1.41 per place 273 first choices 193 places 2018/19 1.8 per place 354 first choices 197 places 2019/20 1.8 per place 350 first choices 194 places 2020/21 1.62 per place 311 first choices 192 places 2021/22 1.48 per place 285 first choices 192 places 2022/23 1.43 per place 281 first choices 196 places 2023/24 1.49 per place 295 first choices 198 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 255 first choices 192 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 205 first choices 195 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 199 first choices 195 places
First preferences per place at Sacred Heart High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 195 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sacred Heart High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 162 314 150 1.94
2016/17 193 300 171 1.55
2017/18 193 273 166 1.41
2018/19 197 354 165 1.8
2019/20 194 350 156 1.8
2020/21 192 311 163 1.62
2021/22 192 285 156 1.48
2022/23 196 281 164 1.43
2023/24 198 295 167 1.49
2024/25 192 255 152 1.33
2025/26 195 205 138 1.05
2026/27 195 199 143 1.02

Places offered

195

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

662 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.9%

143 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

76%

148 of 195 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

924

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

976

105.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

52

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

120

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 Sacred Heart High 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 Sacred Heart High 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sacred Heart High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 762 places 821 on roll 2012/13 793 places 816 on roll 2013/14 897 places 896 on roll 2014/15 897 places 926 on roll 2015/16 897 places 958 on roll 2016/17 950 places 1,019 on roll 2017/18 950 places 1,023 on roll 2018/19 1,044 places 1,048 on roll 2020/21 1,044 places 1,131 on roll 2021/22 1,044 places 1,132 on roll 2022/23 1,044 places 1,122 on roll 2023/24 1,044 places 1,138 on roll 2024/25 1,044 places 1,117 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Sacred Heart High School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sacred Heart High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 August 2023 No fault found ADA4114
23 February 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2778

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 W6 7DG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137935).

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.