School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Grey Coat Hospital?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 195 families who named The Grey Coat Hospital as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 333 put it first.

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

1.97

first choices for every place available

333 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Grey Coat Hospital

There is no published appeal success rate for The Grey Coat Hospital, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Westminster 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 Westminster, 5.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 8 of 152 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 Westminster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Westminster 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

The Grey Coat Hospital 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 The Grey Coat Hospital, 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 2.41 per place 366 first choices 152 places 2016/17 2.64 per place 439 first choices 166 places 2017/18 2.67 per place 444 first choices 166 places 2018/19 2.29 per place 380 first choices 166 places 2019/20 2.55 per place 428 first choices 168 places 2020/21 2.29 per place 378 first choices 165 places 2021/22 2.23 per place 363 first choices 163 places 2022/23 1.77 per place 291 first choices 164 places 2023/24 2.1 per place 348 first choices 166 places 2024/25 1.9 per place 315 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.79 per place 293 first choices 164 places 2026/27 1.97 per place 333 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at The Grey Coat Hospital. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 333 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Grey Coat Hospital, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 152 366 128 2.41
2016/17 166 439 133 2.64
2017/18 166 444 146 2.67
2018/19 166 380 141 2.29
2019/20 168 428 140 2.55
2020/21 165 378 125 2.29
2021/22 163 363 129 2.23
2022/23 164 291 129 1.77
2023/24 166 348 135 2.1
2024/25 166 315 138 1.9
2025/26 164 293 133 1.79
2026/27 169 333 138 1.97

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

333

900 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

41.4%

138 of 333

Offers to families outside the council

86%

145 of 169 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

755

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

836

110.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

81

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 The Grey Coat Hospital 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 The Grey Coat Hospital 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Grey Coat Hospital from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,050 places 1,039 on roll 2013/14 1,082 places 1,015 on roll 2014/15 1,082 places 1,034 on roll 2015/16 1,082 places 1,055 on roll 2016/17 1,082 places 1,021 on roll 2017/18 1,082 places 1,049 on roll 2018/19 1,082 places 1,071 on roll 2020/21 1,055 places 1,098 on roll 2021/22 1,055 places 1,115 on roll 2022/23 1,055 places 1,135 on roll 2023/24 1,055 places 1,130 on roll 2024/25 1,055 places 1,133 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Westminster

Postcode SW1P 2DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138313).

Other contested secondary schools in Westminster

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.