School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Hurlingham Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named The Hurlingham Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 125 put it first and 87 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.

38

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

125 first preferences for 134 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Hurlingham Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Hurlingham 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

The Hurlingham Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Hurlingham 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 ratio not published 13 first choices 115 places 2016/17 0.2 per place 29 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.22 per place 34 first choices 157 places 2018/19 0.2 per place 42 first choices 214 places 2019/20 0.4 per place 68 first choices 169 places 2020/21 0.46 per place 85 first choices 185 places 2021/22 0.51 per place 87 first choices 169 places 2022/23 0.47 per place 84 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.59 per place 112 first choices 189 places 2024/25 0.72 per place 115 first choices 160 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 143 first choices 149 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 125 first choices 134 places
First preferences per place at The Hurlingham Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 125 first preferences for 134 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Hurlingham Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 115 13 13 too small to publish
2016/17 148 29 29 0.2
2017/18 157 34 34 0.22
2018/19 214 42 42 0.2
2019/20 169 68 68 0.4
2020/21 185 85 85 0.46
2021/22 169 87 87 0.51
2022/23 180 84 84 0.47
2023/24 189 112 112 0.59
2024/25 160 115 104 0.72
2025/26 149 143 105 0.96
2026/27 134 125 87 0.93

Places offered

134

in 2026/27

Named first choice

125

578 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.6%

87 of 125

Offers to families outside the council

32%

43 of 134 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

729

97.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Hurlingham 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 The Hurlingham Academy reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.2% 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 Hurlingham Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 988 places 404 on roll 2015/16 988 places 356 on roll 2016/17 750 places 373 on roll 2017/18 750 places 436 on roll 2018/19 750 places 498 on roll 2020/21 750 places 600 on roll 2021/22 750 places 643 on roll 2022/23 750 places 704 on roll 2023/24 750 places 695 on roll 2024/25 750 places 729 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 SW6 3ED. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141617).

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.