School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 144 families who named Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 176 and 304 put it first.

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

1.73

first choices for every place available

304 first preferences for 176 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary 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 Lambeth 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 Lambeth, 13.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 38 of 279 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 Lambeth.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lambeth 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

Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary 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 Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary 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 1.78 per place 310 first choices 174 places 2016/17 1.89 per place 327 first choices 173 places 2017/18 1.76 per place 308 first choices 175 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 290 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.74 per place 296 first choices 170 places 2020/21 1.66 per place 289 first choices 174 places 2021/22 1.52 per place 266 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.49 per place 259 first choices 174 places 2023/24 1.32 per place 233 first choices 176 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 225 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 238 first choices 176 places 2026/27 1.73 per place 304 first choices 176 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 304 first preferences for 176 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 174 310 140 1.78
2016/17 173 327 140 1.89
2017/18 175 308 153 1.76
2018/19 200 290 148 1.45
2019/20 170 296 141 1.74
2020/21 174 289 153 1.66
2021/22 175 266 146 1.52
2022/23 174 259 153 1.49
2023/24 176 233 148 1.32
2024/25 176 225 151 1.28
2025/26 176 238 157 1.35
2026/27 176 304 160 1.73

Places offered

176

in 2026/27

Named first choice

304

770 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

52.6%

160 of 304

Offers to families outside the council

53%

93 of 176 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

969

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

907

93.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

62

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

330

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 Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary 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 Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School reported 62 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.6% 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 Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary 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 1,189 places 985 on roll 2010/11 1,145 places 1,098 on roll 2011/12 1,189 places 1,093 on roll 2012/13 1,189 places 1,093 on roll 2013/14 1,160 places 1,143 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,179 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,202 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,209 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,193 on roll 2018/19 1,299 places 1,225 on roll 2020/21 1,299 places 1,197 on roll 2021/22 1,299 places 1,203 on roll 2022/23 1,299 places 1,197 on roll 2023/24 1,299 places 1,173 on roll 2024/25 1,299 places 1,172 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
Lambeth

Postcode SW16 2HY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100638).

Other contested secondary schools in Lambeth

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.