School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kingsdale Foundation School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 628 families who named Kingsdale Foundation School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 416 and 964 put it first.

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

2.32

first choices for every place available

964 first preferences for 416 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kingsdale Foundation School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kingsdale Foundation 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 Southwark 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 Southwark, 15.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 85 of 547 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 Southwark.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southwark 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

Kingsdale Foundation 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 Kingsdale Foundation School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.5 per place 592 first choices 237 places 2016/17 1.96 per place 697 first choices 356 places 2017/18 1.59 per place 622 first choices 390 places 2018/19 2.87 per place 1,118 first choices 390 places 2019/20 3.03 per place 1,183 first choices 390 places 2020/21 3.1 per place 1,213 first choices 391 places 2021/22 2.65 per place 1,032 first choices 390 places 2022/23 2.5 per place 984 first choices 393 places 2023/24 2.4 per place 933 first choices 389 places 2024/25 2.45 per place 1,027 first choices 420 places 2025/26 2.23 per place 965 first choices 432 places 2026/27 2.32 per place 964 first choices 416 places
First preferences per place at Kingsdale Foundation School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 964 first preferences for 416 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kingsdale Foundation School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 237 592 184 2.5
2016/17 356 697 246 1.96
2017/18 390 622 326 1.59
2018/19 390 1,118 314 2.87
2019/20 390 1,183 318 3.03
2020/21 391 1,213 319 3.1
2021/22 390 1,032 310 2.65
2022/23 393 984 326 2.5
2023/24 389 933 296 2.4
2024/25 420 1,027 329 2.45
2025/26 432 965 336 2.23
2026/27 416 964 336 2.32

Places offered

416

in 2026/27

Named first choice

964

2,871 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

34.9%

336 of 964

Offers to families outside the council

75%

314 of 416 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

2,130

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

2,086

97.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

44

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

325

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 Kingsdale Foundation 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 Kingsdale Foundation School reported 44 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.9% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kingsdale Foundation School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,300 2,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,250 places 1,266 on roll 2011/12 1,250 places 1,364 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 1,421 on roll 2013/14 1,509 places 1,509 on roll 2014/15 1,559 places 1,551 on roll 2015/16 1,559 places 1,590 on roll 2016/17 1,559 places 1,721 on roll 2017/18 1,559 places 1,891 on roll 2018/19 1,962 places 2,019 on roll 2020/21 2,425 places 2,379 on roll 2021/22 2,425 places 2,462 on roll 2022/23 2,455 places 2,506 on roll 2023/24 2,455 places 2,518 on roll 2024/25 2,455 places 2,529 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. Kingsdale Foundation School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Kingsdale Foundation School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
25 July 2023 No fault found ADA4215
27 September 2017 No fault found ADA3327

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
Southwark

Postcode SE21 8SQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136309).

Other contested secondary schools in Southwark

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.