School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dunraven School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Dunraven School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 152 and 156 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

156 first preferences for 152 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dunraven School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dunraven 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

Dunraven 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 Dunraven School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.92 per place 400 first choices 208 places 2016/17 2.56 per place 529 first choices 207 places 2017/18 2.5 per place 526 first choices 210 places 2018/19 2.57 per place 524 first choices 204 places 2019/20 2.6 per place 536 first choices 206 places 2020/21 2.14 per place 383 first choices 179 places 2021/22 2.13 per place 309 first choices 145 places 2022/23 1.6 per place 277 first choices 173 places 2023/24 2.03 per place 295 first choices 145 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 277 first choices 183 places 2025/26 1.43 per place 211 first choices 148 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 156 first choices 152 places
First preferences per place at Dunraven School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 156 first preferences for 152 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dunraven School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 400 175 1.92
2016/17 207 529 180 2.56
2017/18 210 526 189 2.5
2018/19 204 524 182 2.57
2019/20 206 536 178 2.6
2020/21 179 383 144 2.14
2021/22 145 309 113 2.13
2022/23 173 277 128 1.6
2023/24 145 295 114 2.03
2024/25 183 277 143 1.51
2025/26 148 211 104 1.43
2026/27 152 156 94 1.03

Places offered

152

in 2026/27

Named first choice

156

1,004 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.3%

94 of 156

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 152 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

1,545

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,558

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Dunraven 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 Dunraven 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dunraven School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,375 places 1,195 on roll 2012/13 1,375 places 1,194 on roll 2013/14 1,600 places 1,264 on roll 2014/15 1,760 places 1,327 on roll 2015/16 1,760 places 1,408 on roll 2016/17 1,795 places 1,511 on roll 2017/18 1,795 places 1,593 on roll 2018/19 1,795 places 1,649 on roll 2020/21 1,795 places 1,763 on roll 2021/22 1,795 places 1,751 on roll 2022/23 1,795 places 1,796 on roll 2023/24 1,795 places 1,784 on roll 2024/25 1,795 places 1,777 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
Lambeth

Postcode SW16 2QB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137093).

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.