School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chelsea Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Chelsea Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 108 put it first and 98 of them were offered one.

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

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

108 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chelsea Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Chelsea 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 Kensington and Chelsea 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 Kensington and Chelsea, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 11 of 85 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 Kensington and Chelsea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kensington and Chelsea 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

Chelsea Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 9 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 Chelsea 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 1.05 per place 185 first choices 176 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 181 first choices 177 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 158 first choices 176 places 2018/19 0.62 per place 110 first choices 176 places 2019/20 0.74 per place 131 first choices 176 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 133 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 132 first choices 173 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 156 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 161 first choices 175 places 2024/25 0.74 per place 129 first choices 174 places 2025/26 0.71 per place 124 first choices 174 places 2026/27 0.64 per place 108 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at Chelsea Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 108 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chelsea Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 176 185 105 1.05
2016/17 177 181 96 1.02
2017/18 176 158 102 0.9
2018/19 176 110 77 0.62
2019/20 176 131 101 0.74
2020/21 175 133 94 0.76
2021/22 173 132 91 0.76
2022/23 172 156 108 0.91
2023/24 175 161 115 0.92
2024/25 174 129 108 0.74
2025/26 174 124 108 0.71
2026/27 170 108 98 0.64

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

108

499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.7%

98 of 108

Offers to families outside the council

64%

109 of 170 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

834

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

903

108.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

69

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 Chelsea 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 Chelsea Academy 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 Chelsea Academy 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 1,060 places 161 on roll 2010/11 1,060 places 324 on roll 2011/12 1,060 places 587 on roll 2012/13 1,060 places 825 on roll 2013/14 1,060 places 1,040 on roll 2014/15 1,060 places 1,071 on roll 2015/16 1,060 places 1,086 on roll 2016/17 1,060 places 1,055 on roll 2017/18 1,060 places 1,089 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,120 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,183 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,184 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,177 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,155 on roll 2024/25 1,184 places 1,118 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kensington and Chelsea

Postcode SW10 0AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135531).

Other contested secondary schools in Kensington and Chelsea

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.