School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Waldegrave School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 126 families who named Waldegrave School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 212 and 300 put it first.

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

1.42

first choices for every place available

300 first preferences for 212 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Waldegrave School

There is no published appeal success rate for Waldegrave 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 Richmond upon Thames 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 Richmond upon Thames, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 139 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 Richmond upon Thames.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Richmond upon Thames 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

Waldegrave School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Waldegrave School, 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 1.71 per place 376 first choices 220 places 2016/17 1.62 per place 348 first choices 215 places 2017/18 1.81 per place 389 first choices 215 places 2018/19 1.95 per place 415 first choices 213 places 2019/20 1.98 per place 420 first choices 212 places 2020/21 1.82 per place 388 first choices 213 places 2021/22 1.74 per place 369 first choices 212 places 2022/23 1.72 per place 366 first choices 213 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 294 first choices 216 places 2024/25 1.42 per place 303 first choices 214 places 2025/26 1.34 per place 288 first choices 215 places 2026/27 1.42 per place 300 first choices 212 places
First preferences per place at Waldegrave School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 300 first preferences for 212 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Waldegrave School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 220 376 195 1.71
2016/17 215 348 191 1.62
2017/18 215 389 205 1.81
2018/19 213 415 193 1.95
2019/20 212 420 190 1.98
2020/21 213 388 193 1.82
2021/22 212 369 187 1.74
2022/23 213 366 186 1.72
2023/24 216 294 190 1.36
2024/25 214 303 173 1.42
2025/26 215 288 181 1.34
2026/27 212 300 174 1.42

Places offered

212

in 2026/27

Named first choice

300

905 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58%

174 of 300

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 212 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,084

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

4

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Waldegrave 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 Waldegrave School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Waldegrave School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,000 places 999 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 991 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 1,114 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 1,240 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 1,314 on roll 2017/18 1,256 places 1,338 on roll 2018/19 1,256 places 1,396 on roll 2020/21 1,480 places 1,467 on roll 2021/22 1,480 places 1,466 on roll 2022/23 1,480 places 1,460 on roll 2023/24 1,480 places 1,461 on roll 2024/25 1,480 places 1,465 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Waldegrave School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Waldegrave School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 July 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3668
27 September 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3367

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Richmond upon Thames

Postcode TW2 5LH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138461).

Other contested secondary schools in Richmond upon Thames

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.