School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Matthew Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named St Matthew Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 134 put it first and 83 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.

51

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

134 first preferences for 155 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Matthew Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Matthew 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

St Matthew Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 St Matthew Academy, 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 0.64 per place 83 first choices 130 places 2016/17 0.62 per place 91 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.41 per place 26 first choices 64 places 2018/19 0.45 per place 26 first choices 58 places 2019/20 0.44 per place 47 first choices 107 places 2020/21 0.52 per place 72 first choices 139 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 95 first choices 134 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 95 first choices 132 places 2023/24 0.46 per place 67 first choices 146 places 2024/25 0.53 per place 78 first choices 146 places 2025/26 0.42 per place 66 first choices 157 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 134 first choices 155 places
First preferences per place at St Matthew Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 134 first preferences for 155 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Matthew Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 130 83 78 0.64
2016/17 147 91 89 0.62
2017/18 64 26 26 0.41
2018/19 58 26 26 0.45
2019/20 107 47 47 0.44
2020/21 139 72 72 0.52
2021/22 134 95 73 0.71
2022/23 132 95 76 0.72
2023/24 146 67 67 0.46
2024/25 146 78 78 0.53
2025/26 157 66 62 0.42
2026/27 155 134 83 0.86

Places offered

155

in 2026/27

Named first choice

134

622 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.9%

83 of 134

Offers to families outside the council

15%

24 of 155 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,061

80.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

259

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 St Matthew 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 St Matthew Academy reported 259 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 80.4% 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 St Matthew Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,320 places 947 on roll 2010/11 1,345 places 1,016 on roll 2011/12 1,020 places 1,086 on roll 2012/13 1,320 places 1,112 on roll 2013/14 1,320 places 1,171 on roll 2014/15 1,320 places 1,189 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 1,180 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 1,107 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 993 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 941 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,003 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,005 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,048 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,064 on roll 2024/25 1,320 places 1,061 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lewisham

Postcode SE3 0XX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135264).

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.