School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Queensmead School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Queensmead School as their first choice did not get a place: 195 put it first and 159 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.

36

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

195 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Queensmead School

There is no published appeal success rate for Queensmead 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

Queensmead School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 5 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 Queensmead 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 0.94 per place 234 first choices 249 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 269 first choices 235 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 227 first choices 236 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 249 first choices 228 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 263 first choices 238 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 273 first choices 228 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 226 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 235 first choices 230 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 259 first choices 237 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 258 first choices 235 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 223 first choices 238 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 195 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Queensmead School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Queensmead School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 249 234 190 0.94
2016/17 235 269 199 1.14
2017/18 236 227 175 0.96
2018/19 228 249 177 1.09
2019/20 238 263 187 1.11
2020/21 228 273 185 1.2
2021/22 240 226 167 0.94
2022/23 230 235 184 1.02
2023/24 237 259 180 1.09
2024/25 235 258 186 1.1
2025/26 238 223 188 0.94
2026/27 236 195 159 0.83

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

707 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.5%

159 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

48%

114 of 236 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,202

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

441

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 Queensmead 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 Queensmead 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Queensmead School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,476 places 1,192 on roll 2011/12 1,476 places 1,283 on roll 2012/13 1,476 places 1,360 on roll 2013/14 1,461 places 1,397 on roll 2014/15 1,466 places 1,451 on roll 2015/16 1,466 places 1,474 on roll 2016/17 1,466 places 1,460 on roll 2017/18 1,466 places 1,449 on roll 2018/19 1,466 places 1,422 on roll 2020/21 1,466 places 1,443 on roll 2021/22 1,466 places 1,430 on roll 2022/23 1,466 places 1,469 on roll 2023/24 1,466 places 1,489 on roll 2024/25 1,641 places 1,500 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hillingdon

Postcode HA4 0LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136711).

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.