School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blenheim High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named Blenheim High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 239 and 247 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

247 first preferences for 239 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blenheim High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Blenheim High 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 Surrey 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 Surrey, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 215 of 1,016 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 Surrey.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Surrey 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

Blenheim High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 2 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 Blenheim High 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 0.85 per place 198 first choices 234 places 2016/17 0.69 per place 170 first choices 247 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 166 first choices 234 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 184 first choices 236 places 2019/20 0.66 per place 154 first choices 235 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 207 first choices 243 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 264 first choices 242 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 190 first choices 238 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 257 first choices 240 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 222 first choices 238 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 197 first choices 241 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 247 first choices 239 places
First preferences per place at Blenheim High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 239 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blenheim High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 198 186 0.85
2016/17 247 170 165 0.69
2017/18 234 166 166 0.71
2018/19 236 184 184 0.78
2019/20 235 154 154 0.66
2020/21 243 207 193 0.85
2021/22 242 264 198 1.09
2022/23 238 190 173 0.8
2023/24 240 257 200 1.07
2024/25 238 222 199 0.93
2025/26 241 197 177 0.82
2026/27 239 247 192 1.03

Places offered

239

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

1,012 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

192 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

6%

14 of 239 offers

How close you had to live

Blenheim High School filled its places in 2024, and 3,327m — 2.07 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.07 mi

3,327 metres, 2024

Under criterion

5

as numbered by the school

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Surrey Council, allocation statistics for 2024. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,184

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Blenheim High 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 Blenheim High School reported 16 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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 Blenheim High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,500 places 1,399 on roll 2012/13 1,500 places 1,360 on roll 2013/14 1,500 places 1,352 on roll 2014/15 1,500 places 1,358 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 1,337 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,313 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,261 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,223 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,246 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,286 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,323 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,364 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,383 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
Surrey

Postcode KT19 9BH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137906).

Other contested secondary schools in Surrey

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.