School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holland Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 128 families who named Holland Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 255 and 311 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

311 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holland Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Holland Park 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 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

Holland Park 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 Holland Park School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.46 per place 575 first choices 234 places 2016/17 2.45 per place 576 first choices 235 places 2017/18 2.62 per place 615 first choices 235 places 2018/19 3.08 per place 728 first choices 236 places 2019/20 2.86 per place 670 first choices 234 places 2020/21 2.46 per place 570 first choices 232 places 2021/22 2.63 per place 596 first choices 227 places 2022/23 2.08 per place 470 first choices 226 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 283 first choices 226 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 297 first choices 248 places 2025/26 1.43 per place 362 first choices 253 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 311 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Holland Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 311 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holland Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 575 218 2.46
2016/17 235 576 215 2.45
2017/18 235 615 216 2.62
2018/19 236 728 222 3.08
2019/20 234 670 220 2.86
2020/21 232 570 218 2.46
2021/22 227 596 210 2.63
2022/23 226 470 192 2.08
2023/24 226 283 186 1.25
2024/25 248 297 202 1.2
2025/26 253 362 200 1.43
2026/27 255 311 183 1.22

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

311

1,077 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.8%

183 of 311

Offers to families outside the council

35%

89 of 255 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 140134.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,112

92.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

88

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

230

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 Holland Park 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 Holland Park School reported 88 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.7% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Holland Park School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,430 places 1,337 on roll 2014/15 1,430 places 1,337 on roll 2015/16 1,430 places 1,363 on roll 2016/17 1,430 places 1,350 on roll 2017/18 1,430 places 1,364 on roll 2018/19 1,430 places 1,385 on roll 2020/21 1,430 places 1,396 on roll 2021/22 1,430 places 1,394 on roll 2022/23 1,430 places 1,302 on roll 2023/24 1,430 places 1,271 on roll 2024/25 1,430 places 1,323 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Holland Park School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Holland Park School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
15 February 2022 Arrangements did not comply REF3895

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Kensington and Chelsea

Postcode W8 7AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149632).

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.