School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Grey Court School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 158 families who named Grey Court School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 249 and 365 put it first.

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

1.47

first choices for every place available

365 first preferences for 249 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Grey Court School

There is no published appeal success rate for Grey Court 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 Richmond 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 Richmond upon Thames, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 139 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 Richmond upon Thames.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Richmond 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

Grey Court School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Grey Court 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 1.14 per place 236 first choices 207 places 2016/17 1.31 per place 294 first choices 224 places 2017/18 1.46 per place 344 first choices 235 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 328 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.88 per place 437 first choices 233 places 2020/21 1.58 per place 369 first choices 233 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 314 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 313 first choices 260 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 328 first choices 273 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 373 first choices 281 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 381 first choices 260 places 2026/27 1.47 per place 365 first choices 249 places
First preferences per place at Grey Court School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 365 first preferences for 249 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Grey Court School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 207 236 166 1.14
2016/17 224 294 189 1.31
2017/18 235 344 202 1.46
2018/19 233 328 189 1.41
2019/20 233 437 207 1.88
2020/21 233 369 205 1.58
2021/22 235 314 185 1.34
2022/23 260 313 202 1.2
2023/24 273 328 226 1.2
2024/25 281 373 231 1.33
2025/26 260 381 235 1.47
2026/27 249 365 207 1.47

Places offered

249

in 2026/27

Named first choice

365

1,657 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56.7%

207 of 365

Offers to families outside the council

30%

75 of 249 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,256

104.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

56

reported as full or beyond

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 Grey Court 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 Grey Court 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 Grey Court School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,150 places 1,065 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,090 on roll 2014/15 1,363 places 1,164 on roll 2015/16 1,363 places 1,239 on roll 2016/17 1,363 places 1,263 on roll 2017/18 1,435 places 1,330 on roll 2018/19 1,398 places 1,393 on roll 2020/21 1,398 places 1,491 on roll 2021/22 1,520 places 1,512 on roll 2022/23 1,520 places 1,544 on roll 2023/24 1,520 places 1,595 on roll 2024/25 1,520 places 1,624 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. Grey Court School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Grey Court School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
7 October 2022 Arrangements did not comply REF4073

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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Richmond upon Thames

Postcode TW10 7HN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138825).

Other contested secondary schools in Richmond 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.