School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: 229 put it first and 196 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.

33

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

229 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form, 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

Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form, 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 0.56 per place 134 first choices 239 places 2016/17 0.73 per place 175 first choices 239 places 2017/18 0.61 per place 145 first choices 237 places 2018/19 0.6 per place 141 first choices 235 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 227 first choices 240 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 221 first choices 240 places 2021/22 0.81 per place 194 first choices 239 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 200 first choices 251 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 216 first choices 252 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 206 first choices 252 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 228 first choices 254 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 229 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 229 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 134 134 0.56
2016/17 239 175 164 0.73
2017/18 237 145 145 0.61
2018/19 235 141 140 0.6
2019/20 240 227 188 0.95
2020/21 240 221 189 0.92
2021/22 239 194 171 0.81
2022/23 251 200 194 0.8
2023/24 252 216 198 0.86
2024/25 252 206 198 0.82
2025/26 254 228 208 0.9
2026/27 255 229 196 0.9

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

229

768 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

196 of 229

Offers to families outside the council

15%

37 of 255 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

1,334

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,202

90.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

132

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form 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 Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form reported 132 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.1% 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 Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,388 places 1,317 on roll 2012/13 1,388 places 1,303 on roll 2013/14 1,388 places 1,306 on roll 2014/15 1,388 places 1,305 on roll 2015/16 1,388 places 1,258 on roll 2016/17 1,388 places 1,261 on roll 2017/18 1,410 places 1,240 on roll 2018/19 1,460 places 1,287 on roll 2020/21 1,460 places 1,385 on roll 2021/22 1,460 places 1,418 on roll 2022/23 1,460 places 1,435 on roll 2023/24 1,460 places 1,458 on roll 2024/25 1,654 places 1,483 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 KT6 7EY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137060).

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.