School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School?

In 2026/27, Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School offered 138 places and 92 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.67

first choices for every place available

92 first preferences for 138 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Archbishop Tenison's CofE High 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 Croydon 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 Croydon, 8.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 160 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 Croydon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Croydon 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

Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 5 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High 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 1.43 per place 152 first choices 106 places 2016/17 1.33 per place 142 first choices 107 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 130 first choices 119 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 134 first choices 120 places 2019/20 0.79 per place 93 first choices 118 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 115 first choices 119 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 97 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.56 per place 80 first choices 143 places 2023/24 0.82 per place 127 first choices 154 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 137 first choices 141 places 2025/26 0.69 per place 110 first choices 160 places 2026/27 0.67 per place 92 first choices 138 places
First preferences per place at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 92 first preferences for 138 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 106 152 73 1.43
2016/17 107 142 71 1.33
2017/18 119 130 79 1.09
2018/19 120 134 77 1.12
2019/20 118 93 75 0.79
2020/21 119 115 77 0.97
2021/22 150 97 73 0.65
2022/23 143 80 71 0.56
2023/24 154 127 104 0.82
2024/25 141 137 111 0.97
2025/26 160 110 102 0.69
2026/27 138 92 92 0.67

Places offered

138

in 2026/27

Named first choice

92

417 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

92 of 92

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 138 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

717

119.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

117

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

251

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 Archbishop Tenison's CofE High 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 Archbishop Tenison's CofE High 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 693 places 773 on roll 2010/11 791 places 778 on roll 2011/12 791 places 818 on roll 2012/13 791 places 745 on roll 2013/14 791 places 756 on roll 2014/15 791 places 739 on roll 2015/16 791 places 792 on roll 2016/17 791 places 794 on roll 2017/18 791 places 747 on roll 2018/19 791 places 717 on roll 2020/21 851 places 733 on roll 2021/22 851 places 752 on roll 2022/23 851 places 757 on roll 2023/24 851 places 759 on roll 2024/25 851 places 793 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Croydon

Postcode CR0 5JQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101811).

Other contested secondary schools in Croydon

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.