School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chiswick School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 79 families who named Chiswick School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 258 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

258 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chiswick School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chiswick 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 Hounslow 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 Hounslow, 6.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 401 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 Hounslow.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hounslow 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

Chiswick School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 6 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 Chiswick 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 230 first choices 245 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 215 first choices 236 places 2017/18 0.64 per place 154 first choices 240 places 2018/19 0.55 per place 131 first choices 239 places 2019/20 0.53 per place 110 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.45 per place 111 first choices 244 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 171 first choices 240 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 189 first choices 235 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 210 first choices 238 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 302 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 242 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 258 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Chiswick School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 258 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chiswick School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 245 230 174 0.94
2016/17 236 215 162 0.91
2017/18 240 154 129 0.64
2018/19 239 131 118 0.55
2019/20 207 110 103 0.53
2020/21 244 111 111 0.45
2021/22 240 171 151 0.71
2022/23 235 189 167 0.8
2023/24 238 210 166 0.88
2024/25 234 302 198 1.29
2025/26 235 242 189 1.03
2026/27 240 258 179 1.07

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

258

875 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.4%

179 of 258

Offers to families outside the council

30%

72 of 240 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

1,367

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,191

87.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

176

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

246

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 Chiswick 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 Chiswick School reported 176 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.1% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chiswick School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,274 places 1,255 on roll 2012/13 1,274 places 1,267 on roll 2013/14 1,274 places 1,262 on roll 2014/15 1,274 places 1,251 on roll 2015/16 1,430 places 1,284 on roll 2016/17 1,446 places 1,275 on roll 2017/18 1,596 places 1,244 on roll 2018/19 1,596 places 1,286 on roll 2020/21 1,596 places 1,283 on roll 2021/22 1,596 places 1,395 on roll 2022/23 1,596 places 1,488 on roll 2023/24 1,613 places 1,569 on roll 2024/25 1,613 places 1,591 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
Hounslow

Postcode W4 3UN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137907).

Other contested secondary schools in Hounslow

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.