School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Coombe Boys' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Coombe Boys' School as their first choice did not get a place: 119 put it first and 111 of them were offered one.

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

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

119 first preferences for 194 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Coombe Boys' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Coombe Boys' 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 Kingston upon Thames 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 Kingston upon Thames, 16.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 18 of 111 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 Kingston upon Thames.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kingston upon Thames 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 Boys' School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Coombe Boys' 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 0.54 per place 98 first choices 181 places 2016/17 0.52 per place 87 first choices 168 places 2017/18 0.64 per place 114 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 120 first choices 147 places 2019/20 0.6 per place 107 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 132 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.66 per place 115 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.71 per place 133 first choices 188 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 168 first choices 190 places 2024/25 0.81 per place 153 first choices 189 places 2025/26 0.7 per place 135 first choices 194 places 2026/27 0.61 per place 119 first choices 194 places
First preferences per place at Coombe Boys' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 119 first preferences for 194 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Coombe Boys' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 181 98 98 0.54
2016/17 168 87 87 0.52
2017/18 179 114 114 0.64
2018/19 147 120 91 0.82
2019/20 179 107 95 0.6
2020/21 178 132 117 0.74
2021/22 175 115 89 0.66
2022/23 188 133 115 0.71
2023/24 190 168 132 0.88
2024/25 189 153 130 0.81
2025/26 194 135 124 0.7
2026/27 194 119 111 0.61

Places offered

194

in 2026/27

Named first choice

119

662 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.3%

111 of 119

Offers to families outside the council

38%

73 of 194 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

160

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 Boys' 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 Boys' School reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Coombe Boys' School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 857 places 807 on roll 2012/13 857 places 878 on roll 2013/14 857 places 784 on roll 2014/15 1,060 places 749 on roll 2015/16 1,060 places 771 on roll 2016/17 1,060 places 792 on roll 2017/18 1,060 places 797 on roll 2018/19 1,060 places 823 on roll 2020/21 1,060 places 940 on roll 2021/22 1,060 places 959 on roll 2022/23 1,060 places 970 on roll 2023/24 1,060 places 1,019 on roll 2024/25 1,060 places 1,020 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
Kingston upon Thames

Postcode KT3 6NU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137859).

Other contested secondary schools in Kingston upon Thames

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.