School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sedgehill Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Sedgehill Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 168 put it first and 122 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lewisham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

46

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

168 first preferences for 176 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sedgehill Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sedgehill Academy, 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

Sedgehill Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 6 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 Sedgehill Academy, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 0.45 per place 62 first choices 138 places 2022/23 0.56 per place 91 first choices 163 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 121 first choices 175 places 2024/25 0.81 per place 141 first choices 174 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 146 first choices 173 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 168 first choices 176 places
First preferences per place at Sedgehill Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 176 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sedgehill Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 138 62 62 0.45
2022/23 163 91 91 0.56
2023/24 175 121 109 0.69
2024/25 174 141 121 0.81
2025/26 173 146 111 0.84
2026/27 176 168 122 0.95

Places offered

176

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

634 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.6%

122 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 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

1,533

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

763

49.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

770

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

210

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 Sedgehill Academy 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 Sedgehill Academy reported 770 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 49.8% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sedgehill Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 1,743 places 701 on roll 2021/22 1,743 places 681 on roll 2022/23 1,743 places 716 on roll 2023/24 1,743 places 784 on roll 2024/25 1,743 places 898 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lewisham

Postcode SE6 3QW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148003).

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.