School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Ramsey Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Bishop Ramsey Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: 140 put it first and 118 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Hillingdon actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

22

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

140 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Ramsey Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Ramsey Church of England 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 326 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 Hillingdon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hillingdon 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

Bishop Ramsey Church of England School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 3 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 Bishop Ramsey Church of England 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 1.65 per place 293 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.43 per place 253 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.42 per place 260 first choices 183 places 2018/19 1.59 per place 272 first choices 171 places 2019/20 1.35 per place 247 first choices 183 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 205 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 197 first choices 185 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 220 first choices 205 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 152 first choices 182 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 159 first choices 181 places 2025/26 0.66 per place 121 first choices 184 places 2026/27 0.79 per place 140 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Ramsey Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 140 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Ramsey Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 293 165 1.65
2016/17 177 253 165 1.43
2017/18 183 260 166 1.42
2018/19 171 272 157 1.59
2019/20 183 247 164 1.35
2020/21 178 205 156 1.15
2021/22 185 197 149 1.06
2022/23 205 220 181 1.07
2023/24 182 152 136 0.84
2024/25 181 159 134 0.88
2025/26 184 121 119 0.66
2026/27 178 140 118 0.79

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

140

603 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.3%

118 of 140

Offers to families outside the council

13%

24 of 178 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

939

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

941

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

326

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 Bishop Ramsey Church of England 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 Bishop Ramsey Church of England 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 Bishop Ramsey Church of England School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,244 places 1,252 on roll 2012/13 1,244 places 1,238 on roll 2013/14 1,244 places 1,212 on roll 2014/15 1,244 places 1,252 on roll 2015/16 1,244 places 1,271 on roll 2016/17 1,244 places 1,249 on roll 2017/18 1,244 places 1,225 on roll 2018/19 1,244 places 1,231 on roll 2020/21 1,244 places 1,241 on roll 2021/22 1,244 places 1,250 on roll 2022/23 1,244 places 1,264 on roll 2023/24 1,244 places 1,264 on roll 2024/25 1,265 places 1,250 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hillingdon

Postcode HA4 8EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137407).

Other contested secondary schools in Hillingdon

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.