School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Prendergast Ladywell School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Prendergast Ladywell School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 110 and 120 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

120 first preferences for 110 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Prendergast Ladywell School

There is no published appeal success rate for Prendergast Ladywell 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

Prendergast Ladywell School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Prendergast Ladywell 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 0.45 per place 65 first choices 146 places 2016/17 0.56 per place 74 first choices 131 places 2017/18 0.52 per place 74 first choices 143 places 2018/19 0.52 per place 82 first choices 158 places 2019/20 0.66 per place 116 first choices 176 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 135 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.24 per place 170 first choices 137 places 2022/23 1.43 per place 185 first choices 129 places 2023/24 1.51 per place 183 first choices 121 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 145 first choices 113 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 150 first choices 115 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 120 first choices 110 places
First preferences per place at Prendergast Ladywell School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 120 first preferences for 110 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Prendergast Ladywell School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 65 65 0.45
2016/17 131 74 74 0.56
2017/18 143 74 74 0.52
2018/19 158 82 82 0.52
2019/20 176 116 108 0.66
2020/21 178 135 109 0.76
2021/22 137 170 111 1.24
2022/23 129 185 109 1.43
2023/24 121 183 94 1.51
2024/25 113 145 81 1.28
2025/26 115 150 82 1.3
2026/27 110 120 74 1.09

Places offered

110

in 2026/27

Named first choice

120

717 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.7%

74 of 120

Offers to families outside the council

3%

3 of 110 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 100747.

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

1,620

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,276

78.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

344

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Prendergast Ladywell 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 Prendergast Ladywell School reported 344 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.8% 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 Prendergast Ladywell School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 810 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 818 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 845 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 863 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 870 on roll 2014/15 1,620 places 881 on roll 2015/16 1,620 places 856 on roll 2016/17 1,620 places 876 on roll 2017/18 1,620 places 930 on roll 2018/19 1,620 places 1,015 on roll 2020/21 1,620 places 1,223 on roll 2021/22 1,620 places 1,282 on roll 2022/23 1,620 places 1,278 on roll 2023/24 1,620 places 1,289 on roll 2024/25 1,620 places 1,276 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
Lewisham

Postcode SE4 1SA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150318).

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.