School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Vyners School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 130 families who named Vyners School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 334 put it first.

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

1.46

first choices for every place available

334 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Vyners School

There is no published appeal success rate for Vyners 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

Vyners School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Vyners 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 1.16 per place 210 first choices 181 places 2016/17 1.47 per place 266 first choices 181 places 2017/18 1.7 per place 300 first choices 176 places 2018/19 1.5 per place 258 first choices 172 places 2019/20 1.52 per place 347 first choices 229 places 2020/21 1.67 per place 362 first choices 217 places 2021/22 1.5 per place 344 first choices 230 places 2022/23 1.72 per place 379 first choices 220 places 2023/24 1.72 per place 401 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.52 per place 356 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.52 per place 351 first choices 231 places 2026/27 1.46 per place 334 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Vyners School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 334 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Vyners School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 181 210 157 1.16
2016/17 181 266 165 1.47
2017/18 176 300 159 1.7
2018/19 172 258 154 1.5
2019/20 229 347 209 1.52
2020/21 217 362 194 1.67
2021/22 230 344 198 1.5
2022/23 220 379 205 1.72
2023/24 233 401 214 1.72
2024/25 234 356 215 1.52
2025/26 231 351 208 1.52
2026/27 229 334 204 1.46

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

334

1,165 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.1%

204 of 334

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 229 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

1,201

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,216

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Vyners 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 Vyners 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 Vyners School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,136 places 1,121 on roll 2012/13 1,136 places 1,078 on roll 2013/14 1,161 places 1,115 on roll 2014/15 1,161 places 1,135 on roll 2015/16 1,161 places 1,148 on roll 2016/17 1,161 places 1,144 on roll 2017/18 1,161 places 1,143 on roll 2018/19 1,161 places 1,169 on roll 2020/21 1,451 places 1,291 on roll 2021/22 1,451 places 1,339 on roll 2022/23 1,451 places 1,420 on roll 2023/24 1,451 places 1,484 on roll 2024/25 1,451 places 1,516 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 8AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137635).

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.