School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at George Green's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named George Green's School as their first choice did not get a place: 175 put it first and 172 of them were offered one.

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

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

175 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at George Green's School

There is no published appeal success rate for George Green's 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 Tower Hamlets 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 Tower Hamlets, 2.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 15 of 662 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 Tower Hamlets.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Tower Hamlets 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

George Green's School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 2 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 George Green's 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 0.8 per place 158 first choices 197 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 145 first choices 202 places 2017/18 0.62 per place 142 first choices 228 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 132 first choices 205 places 2019/20 0.65 per place 126 first choices 195 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 159 first choices 199 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 176 first choices 194 places 2022/23 0.79 per place 157 first choices 199 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 197 first choices 190 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 180 first choices 192 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 164 first choices 197 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 175 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at George Green's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at George Green's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 197 158 157 0.8
2016/17 202 145 145 0.72
2017/18 228 142 142 0.62
2018/19 205 132 132 0.64
2019/20 195 126 123 0.65
2020/21 199 159 151 0.8
2021/22 194 176 139 0.91
2022/23 199 157 142 0.79
2023/24 190 197 149 1.04
2024/25 192 180 150 0.94
2025/26 197 164 159 0.83
2026/27 188 175 172 0.93

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

293 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.3%

172 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

4%

8 of 188 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

1,187

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,013

85.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

174

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 George Green's 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 George Green's School reported 174 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.3% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at George Green's School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,239 places 1,122 on roll 2010/11 1,239 places 1,140 on roll 2011/12 1,239 places 1,138 on roll 2012/13 1,239 places 1,086 on roll 2013/14 1,239 places 1,110 on roll 2014/15 1,261 places 1,097 on roll 2015/16 1,226 places 1,108 on roll 2016/17 1,226 places 1,073 on roll 2017/18 1,205 places 1,106 on roll 2018/19 1,205 places 1,165 on roll 2020/21 1,487 places 1,221 on roll 2021/22 1,487 places 1,226 on roll 2022/23 1,487 places 1,231 on roll 2023/24 1,487 places 1,238 on roll 2024/25 1,487 places 1,257 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
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Tower Hamlets

Postcode E14 3DW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100974).

Other contested secondary schools in Tower Hamlets

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.