School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College as their first choice did not get a place: 116 put it first and 106 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.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

116 first preferences for 185 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College

There is no published appeal success rate for Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College, 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 Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College, 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 0.72 per place 129 first choices 178 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 149 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 136 first choices 177 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 149 first choices 177 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 109 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.56 per place 104 first choices 186 places 2021/22 0.46 per place 85 first choices 186 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 146 first choices 186 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 124 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.58 per place 108 first choices 185 places 2025/26 0.68 per place 123 first choices 181 places 2026/27 0.63 per place 116 first choices 185 places
First preferences per place at Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 116 first preferences for 185 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 129 108 0.72
2016/17 180 149 126 0.83
2017/18 177 136 105 0.77
2018/19 177 149 111 0.84
2019/20 189 109 90 0.58
2020/21 186 104 78 0.56
2021/22 186 85 77 0.46
2022/23 186 146 108 0.78
2023/24 180 124 94 0.69
2024/25 185 108 94 0.58
2025/26 181 123 105 0.68
2026/27 185 116 106 0.63

Places offered

185

in 2026/27

Named first choice

116

584 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.4%

106 of 116

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 185 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 100969.

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

950

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

961

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

11

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College 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 Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College 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 Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 923 places 813 on roll 2010/11 923 places 847 on roll 2011/12 923 places 866 on roll 2012/13 923 places 872 on roll 2013/14 923 places 889 on roll 2014/15 900 places 917 on roll 2015/16 1,035 places 972 on roll 2016/17 1,035 places 994 on roll 2017/18 1,215 places 999 on roll 2018/19 1,215 places 1,043 on roll 2020/21 1,215 places 1,212 on roll 2021/22 1,215 places 1,273 on roll 2022/23 1,215 places 1,304 on roll 2023/24 1,310 places 1,358 on roll 2024/25 1,310 places 1,346 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 4SD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144700).

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.