School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Broadwater School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Broadwater School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 219 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

219 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Broadwater School

There is no published appeal success rate for Broadwater 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

Broadwater 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 Broadwater 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 0.57 per place 83 first choices 146 places 2016/17 0.59 per place 87 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.74 per place 90 first choices 121 places 2018/19 0.75 per place 99 first choices 132 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 105 first choices 136 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 124 first choices 134 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 128 first choices 163 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 157 first choices 163 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 175 first choices 176 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 172 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 191 first choices 155 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 219 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Broadwater School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Broadwater School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 83 83 0.57
2016/17 147 87 87 0.59
2017/18 121 90 84 0.74
2018/19 132 99 99 0.75
2019/20 136 105 90 0.77
2020/21 134 124 109 0.93
2021/22 163 128 121 0.79
2022/23 163 157 146 0.96
2023/24 176 175 168 0.99
2024/25 170 172 162 1.01
2025/26 155 191 144 1.23
2026/27 160 219 157 1.37

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

436 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.7%

157 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 160 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 125249.

How close you had to live

Broadwater School filled its places in 2024, and 5,392m — 3.35 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

3.35 mi

5,392 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

716

95.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

34

across Years 7 to 11

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 Broadwater 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 Broadwater School reported 34 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.5% 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 Broadwater School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 452 on roll 2010/11 750 places 443 on roll 2011/12 750 places 431 on roll 2012/13 750 places 475 on roll 2013/14 750 places 478 on roll 2014/15 750 places 495 on roll 2015/16 741 places 516 on roll 2016/17 600 places 528 on roll 2017/18 600 places 527 on roll 2018/19 600 places 545 on roll 2020/21 600 places 573 on roll 2021/22 600 places 613 on roll 2022/23 750 places 657 on roll 2023/24 750 places 695 on roll 2024/25 750 places 716 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 GU7 3BW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147935).

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.