School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham as their first choice did not get a place: 59 put it first and 48 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.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

59 first preferences for 90 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham

There is no published appeal success rate for Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham, 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

Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham, 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 0.9 per place 113 first choices 125 places 2016/17 0.57 per place 66 first choices 116 places 2017/18 0.7 per place 82 first choices 117 places 2018/19 0.6 per place 70 first choices 117 places 2019/20 0.65 per place 90 first choices 138 places 2020/21 0.55 per place 54 first choices 98 places 2021/22 0.64 per place 70 first choices 110 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 74 first choices 80 places 2023/24 0.62 per place 58 first choices 94 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 70 first choices 87 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 77 first choices 86 places 2026/27 0.66 per place 59 first choices 90 places
First preferences per place at Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 59 first preferences for 90 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 125 113 83 0.9
2016/17 116 66 62 0.57
2017/18 117 82 69 0.7
2018/19 117 70 64 0.6
2019/20 138 90 80 0.65
2020/21 98 54 49 0.55
2021/22 110 70 65 0.64
2022/23 80 74 48 0.93
2023/24 94 58 46 0.62
2024/25 87 70 51 0.8
2025/26 86 77 56 0.9
2026/27 90 59 48 0.66

Places offered

90

in 2026/27

Named first choice

59

382 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.4%

48 of 59

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 90 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

1,140

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,044

91.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

96

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 Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham 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 Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham reported 96 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.6% 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 Trinity Church of England School, Lewisham 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 2009/10 500 places 481 on roll 2010/11 689 places 457 on roll 2011/12 689 places 493 on roll 2012/13 500 places 537 on roll 2013/14 1,020 places 616 on roll 2014/15 1,020 places 674 on roll 2015/16 1,140 places 743 on roll 2016/17 1,140 places 797 on roll 2017/18 1,140 places 857 on roll 2018/19 1,140 places 915 on roll 2020/21 1,140 places 1,013 on roll 2021/22 1,140 places 1,005 on roll 2022/23 1,140 places 1,000 on roll 2023/24 1,140 places 1,043 on roll 2024/25 1,140 places 1,044 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lewisham

Postcode SE12 8PD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100749).

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.