School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at School 21?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named School 21 as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 31 and 38 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

38 first preferences for 31 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at School 21

There is no published appeal success rate for School 21, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Newham 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 Newham, 3.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 24 of 626 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 Newham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Newham 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

School 21 turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 4 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 School 21, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 16.0 32.0 48.0 64.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.36 per place 191 first choices 81 places 2016/17 1.76 per place 141 first choices 80 places 2017/18 1.56 per place 125 first choices 80 places 2018/19 2.11 per place 160 first choices 76 places 2019/20 ratio not published 116 first choices 0 places 2020/21 ratio not published 78 first choices 0 places 2021/22 ratio not published 65 first choices 0 places 2022/23 ratio not published 67 first choices 0 places 2023/24 64 per place 64 first choices 1 places 2024/25 41 per place 41 first choices 1 places 2025/26 59 per place 59 first choices 1 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 38 first choices 31 places
First preferences per place at School 21. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 38 first preferences for 31 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at School 21, 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 81 191 62 2.36
2016/17 80 141 66 1.76
2017/18 80 125 72 1.56
2018/19 76 160 68 2.11
2019/20 0 116 0 too small to publish
2020/21 0 78 0 too small to publish
2021/22 0 65 0 too small to publish
2022/23 0 67 0 too small to publish
2023/24 1 64 0 64
2024/25 1 41 1 41
2025/26 1 59 0 59
2026/27 31 38 23 1.23

Places offered

31

in 2026/27

Named first choice

38

379 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.5%

23 of 38

Offers to families outside the council

6%

2 of 31 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

781

86.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

119

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 School 21 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 School 21 reported 119 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.8% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at School 21 from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 147 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 292 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 443 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 586 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 724 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 940 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,199 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,169 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,216 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,186 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,116 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,090 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Newham

Postcode E15 4RZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138196).

Other contested secondary schools in Newham

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.