School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sanders Draper?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Sanders Draper as their first choice did not get a place: 134 put it first and 123 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Havering actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

134 first preferences for 147 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sanders Draper

There is no published appeal success rate for Sanders Draper, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Havering 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 Havering, 7.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 404 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 Havering.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Havering 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

Sanders Draper turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 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 Sanders Draper, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.72 per place 102 first choices 142 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 83 first choices 107 places 2021/22 0.73 per place 82 first choices 112 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 131 first choices 145 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 164 first choices 143 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 172 first choices 175 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 161 first choices 146 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 134 first choices 147 places
First preferences per place at Sanders Draper. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 134 first preferences for 147 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sanders Draper, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 142 102 102 0.72
2020/21 107 83 83 0.78
2021/22 112 82 82 0.73
2022/23 145 131 129 0.9
2023/24 143 164 131 1.15
2024/25 175 172 149 0.98
2025/26 146 161 122 1.1
2026/27 147 134 123 0.91

Places offered

147

in 2026/27

Named first choice

134

465 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.8%

123 of 134

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 147 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

700

72.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

260

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 Sanders Draper 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 Sanders Draper reported 260 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 72.9% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sanders Draper from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 960 places 671 on roll 2020/21 960 places 660 on roll 2021/22 960 places 632 on roll 2022/23 960 places 665 on roll 2023/24 960 places 661 on roll 2024/25 960 places 700 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
Havering

Postcode RM12 6RT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146309).

Other contested secondary schools in Havering

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.