School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hampton Gardens Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 41 families who named Hampton Gardens Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 249 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Peterborough actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.09

first choices for every place available

249 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hampton Gardens Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hampton Gardens Secondary 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 Peterborough 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 Peterborough, 12.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 29 of 230 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 Peterborough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Peterborough 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

Hampton Gardens Secondary School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Hampton Gardens Secondary School, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.92 per place 146 first choices 158 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 229 first choices 203 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 184 first choices 201 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 198 first choices 203 places 2021/22 1.23 per place 255 first choices 208 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 220 first choices 204 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 254 first choices 197 places 2024/25 1.4 per place 275 first choices 197 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 243 first choices 198 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 249 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Hampton Gardens Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 249 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hampton Gardens Secondary School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 158 146 143 0.92
2018/19 203 229 198 1.13
2019/20 201 184 183 0.92
2020/21 203 198 184 0.98
2021/22 208 255 201 1.23
2022/23 204 220 191 1.08
2023/24 197 254 187 1.29
2024/25 197 275 187 1.4
2025/26 198 243 175 1.23
2026/27 229 249 208 1.09

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

249

609 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.5%

208 of 249

Offers to families outside the council

47%

108 of 229 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

1,321

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,045

79.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

276

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 Hampton Gardens Secondary 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 Hampton Gardens Secondary School reported 276 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.1% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hampton Gardens Secondary School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,200 places 179 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 414 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 858 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,061 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,147 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,248 on roll 2024/25 1,621 places 1,259 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
Peterborough

Postcode PE7 8HR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143641).

Other contested secondary schools in Peterborough

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.