School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Morpeth School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Morpeth School as their first choice did not get a place: 177 put it first and 176 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.

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

177 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Morpeth School

There is no published appeal success rate for Morpeth 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

Morpeth School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 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 Morpeth 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 1.25 per place 284 first choices 228 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 268 first choices 236 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 295 first choices 229 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 289 first choices 226 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 296 first choices 225 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 265 first choices 228 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 260 first choices 224 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 279 first choices 221 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 249 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 232 first choices 222 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 209 first choices 222 places 2026/27 0.81 per place 177 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at Morpeth School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Morpeth School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 228 284 213 1.25
2016/17 236 268 205 1.14
2017/18 229 295 204 1.29
2018/19 226 289 205 1.28
2019/20 225 296 202 1.32
2020/21 228 265 198 1.16
2021/22 224 260 193 1.16
2022/23 221 279 198 1.26
2023/24 219 249 188 1.14
2024/25 222 232 185 1.05
2025/26 222 209 183 0.94
2026/27 219 177 176 0.81

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

486 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.4%

176 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

4%

9 of 219 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

1,103

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,182

107.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

79

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

440

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 Morpeth 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 Morpeth 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Morpeth School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 1,248 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 1,315 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,171 on roll 2012/13 1,265 places 1,408 on roll 2013/14 1,265 places 1,458 on roll 2014/15 1,502 places 1,479 on roll 2015/16 1,502 places 1,474 on roll 2016/17 1,502 places 1,511 on roll 2017/18 1,543 places 1,525 on roll 2018/19 1,543 places 1,537 on roll 2020/21 1,543 places 1,514 on roll 2021/22 1,543 places 1,553 on roll 2022/23 1,543 places 1,544 on roll 2023/24 1,543 places 1,531 on roll 2024/25 1,543 places 1,512 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Tower Hamlets

Postcode E2 0PX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100967).

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.