School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Farnham Heath End?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Farnham Heath End as their first choice did not get a place: 192 put it first and 188 of them were offered one.

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

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

192 first preferences for 216 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Farnham Heath End

There is no published appeal success rate for Farnham Heath End, 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

Farnham Heath End turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 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 Farnham Heath End, 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 0.58 per place 109 first choices 189 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 143 first choices 222 places 2019/20 0.75 per place 159 first choices 213 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 202 first choices 221 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 188 first choices 219 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 216 first choices 214 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 232 first choices 241 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 190 first choices 218 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 214 first choices 211 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 192 first choices 216 places
First preferences per place at Farnham Heath End. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 216 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Farnham Heath End, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 189 109 109 0.58
2018/19 222 143 143 0.64
2019/20 213 159 159 0.75
2020/21 221 202 194 0.91
2021/22 219 188 188 0.86
2022/23 214 216 192 1.01
2023/24 241 232 206 0.96
2024/25 218 190 184 0.87
2025/26 211 214 189 1.01
2026/27 216 192 188 0.89

Places offered

216

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

478 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.9%

188 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

51%

111 of 216 offers

How close you had to live

Farnham Heath End filled its places in 2024, and 3,406m — 2.12 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

2.12 mi

3,406 metres, 2024

Under criterion

6

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.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Farnham Heath End published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Farnham Heath End, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children who are in the care of a Local Authority or provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in accordance with Section 22 of the Children Act 1989, e.g. fostered or living in a children’s home, at the time an application for a school is made.
2 Children who have previously been in the care of a Local Authority or provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in accordance with Section 22 of the Children Act 1989 and who have left that care through adoption, a child arrangements order (in accordance with Section 8 of the Children Act 1989 and as amended by the Children and Families Act 2014) or special guardianship order (in accordance with Section 14A of the Children Act 1989).
3 Children who appear (to the Admissions Authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. A child will be regarded as having been in state care outside of England if they were accommodated by a public authority, a religious organisation or any other provider of care whose sole purpose is to benefit society. The parent/carer will need to provide evidence to demonstrate that the child was in state care outside England and left that care as a result of being adopted. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Have been employed at Farnham Heath End School for 2 or more years at the final date for admissions applications. In addition, their employment contract must demonstrate their employment address / place of work is the Farnham Heath End School. or
5 Their employment must meet an identified skills shortage at the school. Staff wishing to confirm whether their role qualifies under the skills shortage criterion should speak with the Principal. To qualify for the skills shortage criteria, the member of staff will have been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skills shortage, evidenced by unsuccessful recruitment attempts or a lack of suitable applicants. Applicants will be informed of their status for this purpose. By children of staff we mean children for whom the staff member is the parent, legal guardian, or resident step-parent. […] criterion continues in the source document
6 If the application is for Year 7 in September, this form and supporting evidence must be submitted to the Admissions Officer by 31st October. Any forms or evidence submitted after this date may not be considered until after the national offer day.
7 If the application is for In-Year admission at any other time, this form and supporting evidence must be submitted to the Admissions Officer at the same time as submitting the Local Authority application. Fourth priority: Siblings Priority will be given to students who have a sibling on roll at the school at the time of application. Examples of qualifying relationships include:
8 Brother or sister
9 Half brother or half sister
10 Adopted brother or adopted sister
11 Foster brother or foster sister
12 Stepbrother or stepsister
13 Child of the parent’s partner In all cases, the child must live in the same family unit at the same address, Monday to Friday. Sibling priority helps to maximise the opportunity for children in the same family to attend the same school. A mainstream child will also be given sibling priority if they have a sibling with a final Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) naming the same school, provided that the sibling with the EHCP is expected to start at the school on or before the mainstream child’s admission. Applicants must declare any child with an EHCP naming the school to be considered for sibling priority. […] criterion continues in the source document
14 Crondall Primary School (Hampshire)
15 Hale Primary School
16 Potters Gate CofE Junior School
17 St Michael's CofE Junior School
18 William Cobbett Junior School All partner schools are treated on an equal basis. For the initial allocation of a place for Year 7, the child must be on roll at a partner

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Farnham Heath End's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,073

105.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

53

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 Farnham Heath End 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 Farnham Heath End 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Farnham Heath End from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 873 places 868 on roll 2017/18 873 places 869 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 892 on roll 2020/21 1,020 places 982 on roll 2021/22 1,020 places 1,016 on roll 2022/23 1,020 places 1,070 on roll 2023/24 1,020 places 1,085 on roll 2024/25 1,020 places 1,073 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 GU9 9BN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144520).

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.