School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Fulham Boys School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 80 families who named The Fulham Boys School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 122 and 154 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.

1.26

first choices for every place available

154 first preferences for 122 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Fulham Boys School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Fulham Boys 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

The Fulham Boys School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 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 The Fulham Boys 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 0.57 per place 78 first choices 137 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 99 first choices 118 places 2017/18 1.32 per place 145 first choices 110 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 162 first choices 115 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 146 first choices 130 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 130 first choices 127 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 143 first choices 125 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 177 first choices 125 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 172 first choices 126 places 2024/25 1.61 per place 185 first choices 115 places 2025/26 1.49 per place 171 first choices 115 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 154 first choices 122 places
First preferences per place at The Fulham Boys School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 154 first preferences for 122 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Fulham Boys School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 137 78 77 0.57
2016/17 118 99 72 0.84
2017/18 110 145 76 1.32
2018/19 115 162 86 1.41
2019/20 130 146 83 1.12
2020/21 127 130 83 1.02
2021/22 125 143 84 1.14
2022/23 125 177 97 1.42
2023/24 126 172 88 1.37
2024/25 115 185 85 1.61
2025/26 115 171 77 1.49
2026/27 122 154 74 1.26

Places offered

122

in 2026/27

Named first choice

154

631 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.1%

74 of 154

Offers to families outside the council

43%

53 of 122 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

631

90.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

69

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 The Fulham Boys 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 The Fulham Boys School reported 69 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.1% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Fulham Boys School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 900 places 81 on roll 2015/16 900 places 215 on roll 2016/17 900 places 336 on roll 2017/18 900 places 433 on roll 2018/19 900 places 545 on roll 2020/21 900 places 684 on roll 2021/22 900 places 759 on roll 2022/23 900 places 776 on roll 2023/24 900 places 821 on roll 2024/25 900 places 806 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. The Fulham Boys School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Fulham Boys School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
5 July 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3391

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hammersmith and Fulham

Postcode SW6 5BD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141135).

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.