School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Paul's Way Trust School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 210 families who named St Paul's Way Trust School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 200 and 401 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.

2

first choices for every place available

401 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Paul's Way Trust School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Paul's Way Trust 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

St Paul's Way Trust School 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 St Paul's Way Trust School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.58 per place 361 first choices 228 places 2016/17 1.55 per place 368 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.93 per place 446 first choices 231 places 2018/19 2.2 per place 486 first choices 221 places 2019/20 2.49 per place 555 first choices 223 places 2020/21 2.41 per place 518 first choices 215 places 2021/22 2.33 per place 515 first choices 221 places 2022/23 2.12 per place 462 first choices 218 places 2023/24 2.15 per place 477 first choices 222 places 2024/25 2.28 per place 468 first choices 205 places 2025/26 2.19 per place 463 first choices 211 places 2026/27 2 per place 401 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at St Paul's Way Trust School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 401 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Paul's Way Trust School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 228 361 201 1.58
2016/17 238 368 213 1.55
2017/18 231 446 216 1.93
2018/19 221 486 206 2.2
2019/20 223 555 208 2.49
2020/21 215 518 193 2.41
2021/22 221 515 208 2.33
2022/23 218 462 194 2.12
2023/24 222 477 210 2.15
2024/25 205 468 194 2.28
2025/26 211 463 199 2.19
2026/27 200 401 191 2

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

401

995 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

47.6%

191 of 401

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 200 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 100970.

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

1,620

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,574

97.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

46

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 St Paul's Way Trust 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 St Paul's Way Trust School reported 46 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.2% 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 St Paul's Way Trust School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 782 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 745 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 835 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 916 on roll 2013/14 1,260 places 1,033 on roll 2014/15 1,680 places 1,211 on roll 2015/16 1,788 places 1,349 on roll 2016/17 1,788 places 1,419 on roll 2017/18 1,820 places 1,513 on roll 2018/19 1,820 places 1,606 on roll 2020/21 1,820 places 1,758 on roll 2021/22 1,820 places 1,774 on roll 2022/23 1,820 places 1,829 on roll 2023/24 1,820 places 1,843 on roll 2024/25 1,820 places 1,840 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 E3 4FT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143379).

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.