School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Graveney School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 354 families who named Graveney School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 282 and 619 put it first.

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

2.20

first choices for every place available

619 first preferences for 282 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Graveney School

There is no published appeal success rate for Graveney 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 Wandsworth 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 Wandsworth, 6.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 16 of 241 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 Wandsworth.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wandsworth 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

Graveney 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 Graveney School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.89 per place 720 first choices 249 places 2016/17 2.89 per place 781 first choices 270 places 2017/18 2.58 per place 704 first choices 273 places 2018/19 2.85 per place 777 first choices 273 places 2019/20 2.34 per place 656 first choices 280 places 2020/21 2.53 per place 704 first choices 278 places 2021/22 2.48 per place 698 first choices 282 places 2022/23 2.09 per place 588 first choices 281 places 2023/24 2.09 per place 585 first choices 280 places 2024/25 2.15 per place 603 first choices 280 places 2025/26 2.17 per place 600 first choices 276 places 2026/27 2.2 per place 619 first choices 282 places
First preferences per place at Graveney School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 619 first preferences for 282 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Graveney School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 249 720 225 2.89
2016/17 270 781 249 2.89
2017/18 273 704 253 2.58
2018/19 273 777 260 2.85
2019/20 280 656 256 2.34
2020/21 278 704 260 2.53
2021/22 282 698 250 2.48
2022/23 281 588 259 2.09
2023/24 280 585 256 2.09
2024/25 280 603 261 2.15
2025/26 276 600 257 2.17
2026/27 282 619 265 2.2

Places offered

282

in 2026/27

Named first choice

619

1,790 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.8%

265 of 619

Offers to families outside the council

31%

88 of 282 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

1,400

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,431

102.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

31

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

850

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 Graveney 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 Graveney School 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Graveney School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,200 2,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,890 places 1,941 on roll 2012/13 1,890 places 1,959 on roll 2013/14 1,890 places 1,949 on roll 2014/15 1,985 places 1,964 on roll 2015/16 1,985 places 1,951 on roll 2016/17 1,985 places 2,048 on roll 2017/18 2,150 places 2,033 on roll 2018/19 2,150 places 2,062 on roll 2020/21 2,150 places 2,256 on roll 2021/22 2,160 places 2,204 on roll 2022/23 2,160 places 2,169 on roll 2023/24 2,250 places 2,274 on roll 2024/25 2,250 places 2,338 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
Wandsworth

Postcode SW17 9BU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137005).

Other contested secondary schools in Wandsworth

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.