School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodcote High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Woodcote High School as their first choice did not get a place: 151 put it first and 137 of them were offered one.

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

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

151 first preferences for 230 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodcote High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodcote 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

Woodcote High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Woodcote 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 1.01 per place 228 first choices 226 places 2016/17 1.31 per place 296 first choices 226 places 2017/18 1 per place 225 first choices 226 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 250 first choices 230 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 228 first choices 249 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 248 first choices 230 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 253 first choices 235 places 2022/23 0.81 per place 195 first choices 240 places 2023/24 0.79 per place 185 first choices 234 places 2024/25 0.8 per place 186 first choices 232 places 2025/26 0.61 per place 142 first choices 234 places 2026/27 0.66 per place 151 first choices 230 places
First preferences per place at Woodcote High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 151 first preferences for 230 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodcote 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
2015/16 226 228 184 1.01
2016/17 226 296 198 1.31
2017/18 226 225 178 1
2018/19 230 250 170 1.09
2019/20 249 228 168 0.92
2020/21 230 248 156 1.08
2021/22 235 253 177 1.08
2022/23 240 195 159 0.81
2023/24 234 185 146 0.79
2024/25 232 186 167 0.8
2025/26 234 142 135 0.61
2026/27 230 151 137 0.66

Places offered

230

in 2026/27

Named first choice

151

860 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.7%

137 of 151

Offers to families outside the council

30%

70 of 230 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

1,064

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,115

104.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

51

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

219

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 Woodcote 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 Woodcote 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Woodcote High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,269 places 1,178 on roll 2013/14 1,269 places 1,203 on roll 2014/15 1,283 places 1,188 on roll 2015/16 1,283 places 1,193 on roll 2016/17 1,283 places 1,224 on roll 2017/18 1,283 places 1,231 on roll 2018/19 1,269 places 1,220 on roll 2020/21 1,269 places 1,217 on roll 2021/22 1,269 places 1,226 on roll 2022/23 1,269 places 1,261 on roll 2023/24 1,269 places 1,287 on roll 2024/25 1,283 places 1,254 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
Croydon

Postcode CR5 2EH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138187).

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.