School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Guru Nanak Sikh Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Guru Nanak Sikh Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 114 put it first and 99 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.

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

114 first preferences for 118 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Guru Nanak Sikh Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Guru Nanak Sikh 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 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

Guru Nanak Sikh Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 4 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 Guru Nanak Sikh 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 1.09 per place 204 first choices 187 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 198 first choices 174 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 196 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 159 first choices 176 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 105 first choices 112 places 2020/21 1.37 per place 155 first choices 113 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 141 first choices 151 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 113 first choices 136 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 109 first choices 83 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 120 first choices 143 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 117 first choices 111 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 114 first choices 118 places
First preferences per place at Guru Nanak Sikh Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 114 first preferences for 118 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Guru Nanak Sikh Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 187 204 172 1.09
2016/17 174 198 149 1.14
2017/18 178 196 148 1.1
2018/19 176 159 141 0.9
2019/20 112 105 84 0.94
2020/21 113 155 103 1.37
2021/22 151 141 122 0.93
2022/23 136 113 107 0.83
2023/24 83 109 67 1.31
2024/25 143 120 110 0.84
2025/26 111 117 91 1.05
2026/27 118 114 99 0.97

Places offered

118

in 2026/27

Named first choice

114

275 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

99 of 114

Offers to families outside the council

28%

33 of 118 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,409

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

89

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

388

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 Guru Nanak Sikh 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 Guru Nanak Sikh Academy 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Guru Nanak Sikh Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,170 places 686 on roll 2011/12 1,170 places 754 on roll 2012/13 1,140 places 1,263 on roll 2013/14 1,170 places 1,313 on roll 2014/15 1,570 places 1,371 on roll 2015/16 1,570 places 1,441 on roll 2016/17 1,600 places 1,509 on roll 2017/18 1,600 places 1,521 on roll 2018/19 1,600 places 1,495 on roll 2020/21 1,600 places 1,515 on roll 2021/22 1,600 places 1,570 on roll 2022/23 1,600 places 1,599 on roll 2023/24 1,600 places 1,568 on roll 2024/25 1,708 places 1,582 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 UB4 0LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136329).

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.