School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Charter School East Dulwich?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 76 families who named The Charter School East Dulwich as their first choice did not get a place: 212 put it first and 136 of them were offered one.

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

76

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

212 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Charter School East Dulwich

There is no published appeal success rate for The Charter School East Dulwich, 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

The Charter School East Dulwich turned first-choice families away in every one of the 10 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 6 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 The Charter School East Dulwich, 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 1.38 per place 160 first choices 116 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 187 first choices 172 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 246 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.68 per place 280 first choices 167 places 2021/22 1.51 per place 260 first choices 172 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 255 first choices 206 places 2023/24 0.82 per place 190 first choices 233 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 200 first choices 230 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 194 first choices 231 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 212 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at The Charter School East Dulwich. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 212 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Charter School East Dulwich, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 116 160 76 1.38
2018/19 172 187 109 1.09
2019/20 171 246 133 1.44
2020/21 167 280 147 1.68
2021/22 172 260 141 1.51
2022/23 206 255 158 1.24
2023/24 233 190 137 0.82
2024/25 230 200 143 0.87
2025/26 231 194 135 0.84
2026/27 231 212 136 0.92

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

212

1,006 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.2%

136 of 212

Offers to families outside the council

9%

20 of 231 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,016

84.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

184

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 The Charter School East Dulwich 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 The Charter School East Dulwich reported 184 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.7% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Charter School East Dulwich from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,200 places 120 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 239 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 421 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 775 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 961 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,161 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,237 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,327 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. The Charter School East Dulwich has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Charter School East Dulwich. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 April 2020 No fault found ADA3647

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southwark

Postcode SE22 8EY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142178).

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.