School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Heathland School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 98 families who named The Heathland School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 265 and 324 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

324 first preferences for 265 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Heathland School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Heathland 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

The Heathland 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 The Heathland 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 1.47 per place 396 first choices 270 places 2016/17 1.47 per place 392 first choices 267 places 2017/18 1.53 per place 412 first choices 269 places 2018/19 1.5 per place 396 first choices 264 places 2019/20 1.52 per place 407 first choices 267 places 2020/21 1.79 per place 473 first choices 264 places 2021/22 1.53 per place 402 first choices 262 places 2022/23 1.52 per place 403 first choices 265 places 2023/24 1.83 per place 488 first choices 267 places 2024/25 1.67 per place 443 first choices 265 places 2025/26 1.34 per place 354 first choices 265 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 324 first choices 265 places
First preferences per place at The Heathland School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 324 first preferences for 265 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Heathland School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 270 396 232 1.47
2016/17 267 392 220 1.47
2017/18 269 412 232 1.53
2018/19 264 396 230 1.5
2019/20 267 407 229 1.52
2020/21 264 473 234 1.79
2021/22 262 402 217 1.53
2022/23 265 403 233 1.52
2023/24 267 488 227 1.83
2024/25 265 443 234 1.67
2025/26 265 354 224 1.34
2026/27 265 324 226 1.22

Places offered

265

in 2026/27

Named first choice

324

1,047 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.8%

226 of 324

Offers to families outside the council

15%

40 of 265 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

1,317

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,342

101.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

25

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

455

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 The Heathland 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 The Heathland 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Heathland School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,679 places 1,805 on roll 2010/11 1,679 places 1,820 on roll 2011/12 1,849 places 1,849 on roll 2012/13 1,849 places 1,840 on roll 2013/14 1,849 places 1,809 on roll 2014/15 1,850 places 1,795 on roll 2015/16 1,850 places 1,826 on roll 2016/17 1,850 places 1,818 on roll 2017/18 1,850 places 1,793 on roll 2018/19 1,805 places 1,786 on roll 2020/21 1,805 places 1,831 on roll 2021/22 1,805 places 1,842 on roll 2022/23 1,805 places 1,843 on roll 2023/24 1,805 places 1,868 on roll 2024/25 1,772 places 1,826 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hounslow

Postcode TW4 5JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102539).

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.