School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Forest Hill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Forest Hill School as their first choice did not get a place: 126 put it first and 99 of them were offered one.

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

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

126 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Forest Hill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Forest Hill 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 Lewisham 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 Lewisham, 11.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 15 of 133 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 Lewisham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lewisham 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

Forest Hill School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Forest Hill 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 0.78 per place 180 first choices 231 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 200 first choices 235 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 190 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.45 per place 91 first choices 204 places 2019/20 0.42 per place 78 first choices 184 places 2020/21 0.42 per place 81 first choices 194 places 2021/22 0.43 per place 75 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.55 per place 106 first choices 192 places 2023/24 0.54 per place 85 first choices 157 places 2024/25 0.56 per place 86 first choices 154 places 2025/26 0.7 per place 119 first choices 171 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 126 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Forest Hill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 126 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Forest Hill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 231 180 151 0.78
2016/17 235 200 162 0.85
2017/18 237 190 154 0.8
2018/19 204 91 91 0.45
2019/20 184 78 78 0.42
2020/21 194 81 81 0.42
2021/22 175 75 75 0.43
2022/23 192 106 105 0.55
2023/24 157 85 85 0.54
2024/25 154 86 86 0.56
2025/26 171 119 106 0.7
2026/27 168 126 99 0.75

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

126

528 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.6%

99 of 126

Offers to families outside the council

13%

22 of 168 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

1,227

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

863

70.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

364

across Years 7 to 11

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 Forest Hill 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 Forest Hill School reported 364 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 70.3% 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 Forest Hill School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,535 places 1,415 on roll 2010/11 1,535 places 1,397 on roll 2011/12 1,450 places 1,410 on roll 2012/13 1,450 places 1,417 on roll 2013/14 1,450 places 1,405 on roll 2014/15 1,450 places 1,373 on roll 2015/16 1,466 places 1,375 on roll 2016/17 1,477 places 1,380 on roll 2017/18 1,477 places 1,328 on roll 2018/19 1,477 places 1,233 on roll 2020/21 1,477 places 1,183 on roll 2021/22 1,477 places 1,114 on roll 2022/23 1,477 places 1,101 on roll 2023/24 1,477 places 1,097 on roll 2024/25 1,477 places 1,073 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lewisham

Postcode SE23 2XN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100745).

Other contested secondary schools in Lewisham

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.