School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at George Abbot School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named George Abbot School as their first choice did not get a place: 284 put it first and 253 of them were offered one.

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

31

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

284 first preferences for 294 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at George Abbot School

There is no published appeal success rate for George Abbot 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

George Abbot School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 George Abbot 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 1.26 per place 368 first choices 291 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 315 first choices 297 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 381 first choices 298 places 2018/19 1.14 per place 337 first choices 296 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 365 first choices 308 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 296 first choices 292 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 275 first choices 296 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 340 first choices 296 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 330 first choices 297 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 335 first choices 290 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 293 first choices 291 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 284 first choices 294 places
First preferences per place at George Abbot School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 284 first preferences for 294 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at George Abbot School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 291 368 271 1.26
2016/17 297 315 273 1.06
2017/18 298 381 285 1.28
2018/19 296 337 280 1.14
2019/20 308 365 290 1.19
2020/21 292 296 247 1.01
2021/22 296 275 250 0.93
2022/23 296 340 264 1.15
2023/24 297 330 266 1.11
2024/25 290 335 265 1.16
2025/26 291 293 255 1.01
2026/27 294 284 253 0.97

Places offered

294

in 2026/27

Named first choice

284

785 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

253 of 284

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 294 offers

How close you had to live

George Abbot School filled its places in 2024, and 1,997m — 1.24 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

1.24 mi

1,997 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.

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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,501

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

490

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 George Abbot 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 George Abbot 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at George Abbot School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,932 places 1,942 on roll 2012/13 1,932 places 1,956 on roll 2013/14 1,932 places 1,960 on roll 2014/15 1,932 places 1,944 on roll 2015/16 1,932 places 2,001 on roll 2016/17 1,932 places 1,983 on roll 2017/18 1,932 places 2,016 on roll 2018/19 1,932 places 1,973 on roll 2020/21 1,990 places 1,934 on roll 2021/22 1,990 places 1,911 on roll 2022/23 1,990 places 1,928 on roll 2023/24 1,990 places 1,935 on roll 2024/25 1,990 places 1,939 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. George Abbot School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming George Abbot School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
11 July 2024 Arrangements did not comply ADA4340

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
Surrey

Postcode GU1 1XX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136906).

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.