School admission appeals in Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames heard 33 school admission appeals in 2026, and 2 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Kingston upon Thames as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Kingston upon Thames success rate has run 3.9 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Kingston upon Thames were upheld
18 of 116 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
42
by parents in Kingston upon Thames
Appeals heard by a panel
33
79% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
2
6.1% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
Some primary appeals in Kingston upon Thames are infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
Too few were heard in Kingston upon Thames to publish a local rate; across England the figure is 9.4%. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Kingston upon Thames
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Kingston upon Thames rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Kingston upon Thames
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 111 | 18 | 16.2% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 5 | 0 | too few | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 5 | 0 | too few | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Kingston upon Thames, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Kingston upon Thames | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 46 | 6 | 13% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 33 | 4 | 12.1% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 37 | 5 | 13.5% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 77 | 9 | 11.7% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 73 | 7 | 9.6% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 43 | 3 | 7% | 19% |
| 2022 | 48 | 5 | 10.4% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 54 | 9 | 16.7% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 44 | 12 | 27.3% | 20% |
| 2025 | 39 | 4 | 10.3% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 33 | 2 | 6.1% | 18.5% |
How Kingston upon Thames compares
Success rate ranking
93 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
147 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 116 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames has 46 state-funded mainstream schools — 35 primary and 11 secondary. The largest concentrations are in Kingston upon Thames, Surbiton, New Malden and Chessington.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Kingston upon Thames schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 9 secondary and 16 primary schools in Kingston upon Thames →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tiffin School | 195 | 479 | 2.46 |
| The Tiffin Girls' School | 189 | 445 | 2.35 |
| Richard Challoner School | 150 | 234 | 1.56 |
| The Kingston Academy | 210 | 306 | 1.46 |
| The Hollyfield School and Sixth Form Centre | 193 | 202 | 1.05 |
| The Holy Cross School | 157 | 165 | 1.05 |
| Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form | 255 | 229 | 0.90 |
| Coombe Girls' School | 252 | 198 | 0.79 |
| Coombe Boys' School | 194 | 119 | 0.61 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexandra Primary School | 60 | 103 | 1.72 |
| Malden Parochial CofE Primary School | 30 | 39 | 1.30 |
| St Luke's CofE Primary School | 30 | 38 | 1.27 |
| Castle Hill Primary School | 60 | 70 | 1.17 |
| Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School | 30 | 34 | 1.13 |
| Knollmead Primary School | 30 | 34 | 1.13 |
| St Paul's CofE Primary School | 30 | 34 | 1.13 |
| Burlington Infant and Nursery School | 120 | 126 | 1.05 |
| Coombe Hill Infant School | 90 | 88 | 0.98 |
| St Matthew's CofE Primary School | 60 | 59 | 0.98 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Kingston upon Thames
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 8 objections about schools in Kingston upon Thames, and found the arrangements did not comply in 3.
Too few to quote as a rate — the national figure is 68.3%.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Richard Challoner School | 19 March 2021 | Did not comply |
| The Tiffin Girls’ School | 17 September 2019 | Complied |
| St Luke’s CE Primary School | 26 August 2015 | Complied |
| Tiffin School | 12 September 2014 | Complied |
| Kingston upon Thames community junior schools | 31 July 2014 | Complied |
| Christ Church New Malden Church of England Primary School | 25 October 2013 | Did not comply |
| Tiffin Girls' School | 14 September 2012 | Did not comply |
| Coombe Girls' School | 20 July 2011 | Complied |
Kingston upon Thames does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.