School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Swakeleys School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Swakeleys School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 185 put it first and 171 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.

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

185 first preferences for 239 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Swakeleys School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Swakeleys School for Girls, 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

Swakeleys School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 2 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 Swakeleys School for Girls, 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 1.33 per place 247 first choices 186 places 2016/17 1.33 per place 237 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.61 per place 281 first choices 174 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 270 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.57 per place 368 first choices 234 places 2020/21 1.44 per place 328 first choices 227 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 271 first choices 236 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 290 first choices 226 places 2023/24 1 per place 236 first choices 237 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 202 first choices 239 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 199 first choices 234 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 185 first choices 239 places
First preferences per place at Swakeleys School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 239 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Swakeleys School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 186 247 175 1.33
2016/17 178 237 140 1.33
2017/18 174 281 144 1.61
2018/19 233 270 190 1.16
2019/20 234 368 195 1.57
2020/21 227 328 202 1.44
2021/22 236 271 189 1.15
2022/23 226 290 200 1.28
2023/24 237 236 187 1
2024/25 239 202 187 0.85
2025/26 234 199 176 0.85
2026/27 239 185 171 0.77

Places offered

239

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.4%

171 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

6%

14 of 239 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

1,162

96.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

38

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 Swakeleys School for Girls 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 Swakeleys School for Girls reported 38 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Swakeleys School for Girls from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,174 places 1,031 on roll 2011/12 1,174 places 1,053 on roll 2012/13 1,174 places 1,102 on roll 2013/14 1,174 places 1,112 on roll 2014/15 1,174 places 1,112 on roll 2015/16 1,174 places 1,127 on roll 2016/17 1,174 places 1,120 on roll 2017/18 1,550 places 1,109 on roll 2018/19 1,550 places 1,178 on roll 2020/21 1,550 places 1,304 on roll 2021/22 1,550 places 1,345 on roll 2022/23 1,550 places 1,374 on roll 2023/24 1,550 places 1,362 on roll 2024/25 1,550 places 1,395 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 UB10 0EJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136631).

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.