School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at West London Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 132 families who named West London Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 130 and 240 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.

1.85

first choices for every place available

240 first preferences for 130 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at West London Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for West London Free 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

West London Free 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 West London Free 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 1.52 per place 176 first choices 116 places 2016/17 1.96 per place 225 first choices 115 places 2017/18 2.49 per place 289 first choices 116 places 2018/19 2.51 per place 314 first choices 125 places 2019/20 2.63 per place 332 first choices 126 places 2020/21 2.38 per place 295 first choices 124 places 2021/22 2.23 per place 297 first choices 133 places 2022/23 1.89 per place 261 first choices 138 places 2023/24 1.8 per place 232 first choices 129 places 2024/25 1.61 per place 201 first choices 125 places 2025/26 1.62 per place 206 first choices 127 places 2026/27 1.85 per place 240 first choices 130 places
First preferences per place at West London Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 240 first preferences for 130 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at West London Free School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 176 70 1.52
2016/17 115 225 77 1.96
2017/18 116 289 91 2.49
2018/19 125 314 95 2.51
2019/20 126 332 106 2.63
2020/21 124 295 102 2.38
2021/22 133 297 123 2.23
2022/23 138 261 129 1.89
2023/24 129 232 103 1.8
2024/25 125 201 96 1.61
2025/26 127 206 107 1.62
2026/27 130 240 108 1.85

Places offered

130

in 2026/27

Named first choice

240

1,033 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

45%

108 of 240

Offers to families outside the council

28%

37 of 130 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

605

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

652

107.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

47

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

235

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 West London Free 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 West London Free 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 West London Free School 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 2011/12 840 places 120 on roll 2012/13 840 places 240 on roll 2013/14 840 places 359 on roll 2014/15 840 places 476 on roll 2015/16 840 places 598 on roll 2016/17 840 places 710 on roll 2017/18 840 places 838 on roll 2018/19 840 places 850 on roll 2020/21 840 places 873 on roll 2021/22 840 places 889 on roll 2022/23 840 places 906 on roll 2023/24 840 places 913 on roll 2024/25 840 places 918 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. West London Free School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming West London Free School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 August 2012 Arrangements did not comply ADA2371

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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hammersmith and Fulham

Postcode W6 9LP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136750).

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.