School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kelmscott School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 44 families who named Kelmscott School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 222 and 234 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

234 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kelmscott School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kelmscott 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 Waltham Forest 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 Waltham Forest, 11.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 235 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 Waltham Forest.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Waltham Forest 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

Kelmscott School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Kelmscott 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 121 first choices 152 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 104 first choices 133 places 2017/18 0.68 per place 92 first choices 136 places 2018/19 0.71 per place 102 first choices 144 places 2019/20 0.44 per place 72 first choices 162 places 2020/21 0.58 per place 104 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.66 per place 109 first choices 165 places 2022/23 0.6 per place 106 first choices 177 places 2023/24 0.61 per place 140 first choices 229 places 2024/25 0.77 per place 175 first choices 227 places 2025/26 0.78 per place 172 first choices 221 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 234 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at Kelmscott School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 234 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kelmscott School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 152 121 120 0.8
2016/17 133 104 103 0.78
2017/18 136 92 92 0.68
2018/19 144 102 102 0.71
2019/20 162 72 72 0.44
2020/21 180 104 104 0.58
2021/22 165 109 109 0.66
2022/23 177 106 106 0.6
2023/24 229 140 140 0.61
2024/25 227 175 175 0.77
2025/26 221 172 172 0.78
2026/27 222 234 190 1.05

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

234

613 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.2%

190 of 234

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 222 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

1,170

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,107

94.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

63

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Kelmscott 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 Kelmscott School reported 63 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.6% 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 Kelmscott School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 895 on roll 2010/11 900 places 883 on roll 2011/12 900 places 893 on roll 2012/13 900 places 891 on roll 2013/14 927 places 909 on roll 2014/15 927 places 882 on roll 2015/16 927 places 886 on roll 2016/17 927 places 892 on roll 2017/18 927 places 849 on roll 2018/19 927 places 838 on roll 2020/21 930 places 875 on roll 2021/22 930 places 908 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 990 on roll 2023/24 1,110 places 1,040 on roll 2024/25 1,170 places 1,107 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
Waltham Forest

Postcode E17 8DN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103105).

Other contested secondary schools in Waltham Forest

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.