School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rutlish School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Rutlish School as their first choice did not get a place: 195 put it first and 167 of them were offered one.

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

28

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

195 first preferences for 260 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rutlish School

There is no published appeal success rate for Rutlish 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 Merton 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 Merton, 18.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 135 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 Merton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Merton 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

Rutlish School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 9 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 Rutlish 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 0.73 per place 177 first choices 242 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 204 first choices 237 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 204 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 291 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.09 per place 275 first choices 253 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 230 first choices 257 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 215 first choices 262 places 2022/23 1 per place 260 first choices 260 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 218 first choices 259 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 239 first choices 257 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 250 first choices 260 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 195 first choices 260 places
First preferences per place at Rutlish School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 260 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rutlish School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 242 177 164 0.73
2016/17 237 204 168 0.86
2017/18 237 204 176 0.86
2018/19 238 291 192 1.22
2019/20 253 275 200 1.09
2020/21 257 230 193 0.89
2021/22 262 215 170 0.82
2022/23 260 260 208 1
2023/24 259 218 180 0.84
2024/25 257 239 196 0.93
2025/26 260 250 201 0.96
2026/27 260 195 167 0.75

Places offered

260

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

757 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

167 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

3%

8 of 260 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

1,340

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,187

88.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

153

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

247

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 Rutlish 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 Rutlish School reported 153 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.6% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rutlish School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,263 places 1,089 on roll 2010/11 1,413 places 1,121 on roll 2011/12 1,470 places 1,171 on roll 2012/13 1,420 places 1,203 on roll 2013/14 1,420 places 1,206 on roll 2014/15 1,381 places 1,225 on roll 2015/16 1,381 places 1,261 on roll 2016/17 1,381 places 1,300 on roll 2017/18 1,381 places 1,316 on roll 2018/19 1,381 places 1,320 on roll 2020/21 1,381 places 1,393 on roll 2021/22 1,452 places 1,439 on roll 2022/23 1,447 places 1,459 on roll 2023/24 1,445 places 1,473 on roll 2024/25 1,587 places 1,482 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Rutlish School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Rutlish School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 June 2016 No fault found ADA3090

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Merton

Postcode SW20 9AD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102679).

Other contested secondary schools in Merton

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.