School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Walthamstow School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 69 families who named Walthamstow School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 231 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.

1.34

first choices for every place available

231 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Walthamstow School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Walthamstow 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 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

Walthamstow 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 Walthamstow 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 1.3 per place 230 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 199 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.44 per place 257 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 241 first choices 175 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 252 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 214 first choices 177 places 2021/22 1.23 per place 219 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.35 per place 237 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 231 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.49 per place 253 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 218 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 231 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Walthamstow School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 231 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Walthamstow 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
2015/16 177 230 161 1.3
2016/17 178 199 160 1.12
2017/18 179 257 165 1.44
2018/19 175 241 164 1.38
2019/20 177 252 162 1.42
2020/21 177 214 155 1.21
2021/22 178 219 156 1.23
2022/23 176 237 167 1.35
2023/24 178 231 161 1.3
2024/25 170 253 164 1.49
2025/26 173 218 165 1.26
2026/27 173 231 162 1.34

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

231

550 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.1%

162 of 231

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 173 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

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 Walthamstow 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 Walthamstow School for Girls reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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 Walthamstow School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 898 on roll 2010/11 900 places 901 on roll 2011/12 900 places 899 on roll 2012/13 900 places 893 on roll 2013/14 900 places 899 on roll 2014/15 900 places 896 on roll 2015/16 900 places 892 on roll 2016/17 900 places 887 on roll 2017/18 900 places 887 on roll 2018/19 900 places 884 on roll 2020/21 900 places 886 on roll 2021/22 900 places 893 on roll 2022/23 900 places 894 on roll 2023/24 900 places 898 on roll 2024/25 900 places 894 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 9RZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103103).

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.