School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Gunnersbury Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Gunnersbury Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 139 put it first and 111 of them were offered one.

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

28

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

139 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Gunnersbury Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for Gunnersbury Catholic 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

Gunnersbury Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Gunnersbury Catholic 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 0.59 per place 107 first choices 182 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 156 first choices 182 places 2017/18 0.89 per place 158 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 149 first choices 181 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 105 first choices 181 places 2020/21 0.57 per place 102 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.66 per place 121 first choices 184 places 2022/23 0.45 per place 81 first choices 182 places 2023/24 0.53 per place 97 first choices 184 places 2024/25 0.65 per place 120 first choices 184 places 2025/26 0.72 per place 133 first choices 184 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 139 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Gunnersbury Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 139 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Gunnersbury Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 182 107 78 0.59
2016/17 182 156 92 0.86
2017/18 178 158 83 0.89
2018/19 181 149 102 0.82
2019/20 181 105 77 0.58
2020/21 180 102 81 0.57
2021/22 184 121 99 0.66
2022/23 182 81 81 0.45
2023/24 184 97 92 0.53
2024/25 184 120 108 0.65
2025/26 184 133 104 0.72
2026/27 184 139 111 0.76

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

139

609 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.9%

111 of 139

Offers to families outside the council

57%

105 of 184 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

920

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

887

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

33

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

340

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 Gunnersbury Catholic 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 Gunnersbury Catholic School reported 33 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Gunnersbury Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,169 places 1,176 on roll 2010/11 1,168 places 1,165 on roll 2011/12 1,168 places 1,143 on roll 2012/13 1,168 places 1,144 on roll 2013/14 1,168 places 1,161 on roll 2014/15 1,168 places 1,167 on roll 2015/16 1,168 places 1,154 on roll 2016/17 1,168 places 1,188 on roll 2017/18 1,168 places 1,210 on roll 2018/19 1,288 places 1,203 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,227 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,208 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,194 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,201 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,232 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hounslow

Postcode TW8 9LB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102545).

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.