School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Coombe Wood School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 177 families who named Coombe Wood School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 321 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Croydon actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.84

first choices for every place available

321 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Coombe Wood School

There is no published appeal success rate for Coombe Wood 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

Coombe Wood School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 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 Coombe Wood School, 2019/20 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 one first preference per place 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 1.95 per place 344 first choices 176 places 2020/21 2.42 per place 421 first choices 174 places 2021/22 2.5 per place 425 first choices 170 places 2022/23 3.96 per place 673 first choices 170 places 2023/24 3.27 per place 562 first choices 172 places 2024/25 2.35 per place 394 first choices 168 places 2025/26 2.46 per place 430 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.84 per place 321 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at Coombe Wood School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 321 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Coombe Wood School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 176 344 130 1.95
2020/21 174 421 146 2.42
2021/22 170 425 142 2.5
2022/23 170 673 158 3.96
2023/24 172 562 160 3.27
2024/25 168 394 144 2.35
2025/26 175 430 139 2.46
2026/27 174 321 144 1.84

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

321

1,239 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

44.9%

144 of 321

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 174 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

74.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

303

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

480

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 Coombe Wood 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 Coombe Wood School reported 303 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.8% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Coombe Wood School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,680 places 180 on roll 2020/21 1,680 places 540 on roll 2021/22 1,680 places 785 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,028 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,064 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,135 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Croydon

Postcode CR2 7HY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145875).

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.