School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Mulberry School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Mulberry School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 238 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

238 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Mulberry School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Mulberry School for Girls, 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

Mulberry School for Girls 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 Mulberry School for Girls, 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 1.52 per place 309 first choices 203 places 2016/17 1.61 per place 339 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.5 per place 309 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 289 first choices 231 places 2019/20 1.35 per place 317 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 289 first choices 232 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 248 first choices 231 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 289 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 267 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 263 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 262 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 238 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Mulberry School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Mulberry School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 203 309 193 1.52
2016/17 210 339 203 1.61
2017/18 206 309 192 1.5
2018/19 231 289 215 1.25
2019/20 235 317 215 1.35
2020/21 232 289 205 1.25
2021/22 231 248 195 1.07
2022/23 236 289 217 1.22
2023/24 234 267 196 1.14
2024/25 235 263 211 1.12
2025/26 234 262 215 1.12
2026/27 232 238 210 1.03

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

534 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.2%

210 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 232 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 100968.

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

1,120

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,224

109.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

104

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

480

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 Mulberry School for Girls 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 Mulberry School for Girls 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 Mulberry School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,400 places 1,396 on roll 2010/11 1,400 places 1,392 on roll 2011/12 1,400 places 1,462 on roll 2012/13 1,400 places 1,398 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,427 on roll 2014/15 1,438 places 1,434 on roll 2015/16 1,438 places 1,394 on roll 2016/17 1,438 places 1,398 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,392 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,412 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,495 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,556 on roll 2022/23 1,600 places 1,618 on roll 2023/24 1,600 places 1,654 on roll 2024/25 1,600 places 1,648 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Tower Hamlets

Postcode E1 2JP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143629).

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.