School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Elmgreen School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named The Elmgreen School as their first choice did not get a place: 120 put it first and 100 of them were offered one.

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

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

120 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Elmgreen School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Elmgreen 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

The Elmgreen School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 The Elmgreen 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 0.43 per place 72 first choices 168 places 2016/17 0.37 per place 63 first choices 170 places 2017/18 0.54 per place 92 first choices 171 places 2018/19 0.66 per place 115 first choices 175 places 2019/20 0.59 per place 101 first choices 170 places 2020/21 0.56 per place 97 first choices 172 places 2021/22 0.56 per place 100 first choices 177 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 132 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 122 first choices 165 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 143 first choices 163 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 154 first choices 167 places 2026/27 0.7 per place 120 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at The Elmgreen School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 120 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Elmgreen School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 168 72 63 0.43
2016/17 170 63 54 0.37
2017/18 171 92 83 0.54
2018/19 175 115 81 0.66
2019/20 170 101 75 0.59
2020/21 172 97 78 0.56
2021/22 177 100 89 0.56
2022/23 172 132 98 0.77
2023/24 165 122 82 0.74
2024/25 163 143 90 0.88
2025/26 167 154 112 0.92
2026/27 172 120 100 0.7

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

120

683 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.3%

100 of 120

Offers to families outside the council

12%

20 of 172 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 129649.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

868

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

32

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Elmgreen 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 Elmgreen School reported 32 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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 The Elmgreen School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 540 places 527 on roll 2010/11 720 places 701 on roll 2011/12 900 places 870 on roll 2012/13 900 places 970 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,009 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,015 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,025 on roll 2016/17 1,073 places 1,033 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,060 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,090 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,050 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,082 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,116 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,128 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 1,104 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 SE27 9BZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144309).

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.