School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Richmond upon Thames School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named The Richmond upon Thames School as their first choice did not get a place: 70 put it first and 64 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Richmond upon Thames actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

6

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

70 first preferences for 183 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Richmond upon Thames School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Richmond upon Thames 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

The Richmond upon Thames School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 10 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 The Richmond upon Thames School, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.36 per place 53 first choices 146 places 2018/19 0.55 per place 81 first choices 148 places 2019/20 0.66 per place 97 first choices 146 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 121 first choices 145 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 97 first choices 149 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 112 first choices 146 places 2023/24 0.63 per place 94 first choices 150 places 2024/25 0.51 per place 82 first choices 160 places 2025/26 0.51 per place 82 first choices 162 places 2026/27 0.38 per place 70 first choices 183 places
First preferences per place at The Richmond upon Thames School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 70 first preferences for 183 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Richmond upon Thames School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 146 53 49 0.36
2018/19 148 81 68 0.55
2019/20 146 97 64 0.66
2020/21 145 121 81 0.83
2021/22 149 97 68 0.65
2022/23 146 112 80 0.77
2023/24 150 94 71 0.63
2024/25 160 82 65 0.51
2025/26 162 82 77 0.51
2026/27 183 70 64 0.38

Places offered

183

in 2026/27

Named first choice

70

638 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.4%

64 of 70

Offers to families outside the council

37%

68 of 183 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

752

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 The Richmond upon Thames 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 The Richmond upon Thames 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Richmond upon Thames School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 900 places 122 on roll 2018/19 900 places 275 on roll 2020/21 900 places 599 on roll 2021/22 900 places 742 on roll 2022/23 750 places 744 on roll 2023/24 750 places 736 on roll 2024/25 750 places 752 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Richmond upon Thames

Postcode TW2 7SL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143022).

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.