School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Springwest Academy?

In 2026/27, Springwest Academy offered 200 places and 96 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.48

first choices for every place available

96 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Springwest Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Springwest Academy, 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

Springwest Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Springwest Academy, 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 0.45 per place 88 first choices 195 places 2016/17 0.38 per place 95 first choices 247 places 2017/18 0.44 per place 114 first choices 259 places 2018/19 0.6 per place 103 first choices 172 places 2019/20 0.7 per place 162 first choices 232 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 136 first choices 172 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 132 first choices 168 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 131 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 140 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1 per place 172 first choices 172 places 2025/26 0.63 per place 121 first choices 193 places 2026/27 0.48 per place 96 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at Springwest Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 96 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Springwest Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 195 88 88 0.45
2016/17 247 95 95 0.38
2017/18 259 114 114 0.44
2018/19 172 103 98 0.6
2019/20 232 162 162 0.7
2020/21 172 136 129 0.79
2021/22 168 132 132 0.79
2022/23 172 131 131 0.76
2023/24 204 140 140 0.69
2024/25 172 172 147 1
2025/26 193 121 121 0.63
2026/27 200 96 96 0.48

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

96

356 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

96 of 96

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 161 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

1,094

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

932

85.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

162

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Springwest Academy 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 Springwest Academy reported 162 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.2% 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 Springwest Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,414 places 1,102 on roll 2012/13 1,414 places 1,040 on roll 2013/14 1,414 places 989 on roll 2014/15 1,414 places 914 on roll 2015/16 1,414 places 913 on roll 2016/17 1,414 places 898 on roll 2017/18 1,414 places 878 on roll 2018/19 1,140 places 897 on roll 2020/21 1,094 places 961 on roll 2021/22 1,094 places 933 on roll 2022/23 1,094 places 900 on roll 2023/24 1,094 places 935 on roll 2024/25 1,094 places 932 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 TW13 7EF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137618).

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.