School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Gordon's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 104 families who named Gordon's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 106 and 209 put it first.

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

1.97

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 106 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Gordon's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Gordon's 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

Gordon's School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Gordon's School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.73 per place 183 first choices 106 places 2016/17 1.57 per place 159 first choices 101 places 2017/18 1.56 per place 176 first choices 113 places 2018/19 1.82 per place 195 first choices 107 places 2019/20 1.91 per place 206 first choices 108 places 2020/21 2.05 per place 232 first choices 113 places 2021/22 1.82 per place 191 first choices 105 places 2022/23 2.08 per place 220 first choices 106 places 2023/24 1.95 per place 224 first choices 115 places 2024/25 1.57 per place 182 first choices 116 places 2025/26 1.84 per place 208 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.97 per place 209 first choices 106 places
First preferences per place at Gordon's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 106 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Gordon's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 106 183 105 1.73
2016/17 101 159 98 1.57
2017/18 113 176 110 1.56
2018/19 107 195 100 1.82
2019/20 108 206 107 1.91
2020/21 113 232 108 2.05
2021/22 105 191 103 1.82
2022/23 106 220 106 2.08
2023/24 115 224 115 1.95
2024/25 116 182 113 1.57
2025/26 113 208 113 1.84
2026/27 106 209 105 1.97

Places offered

106

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

483 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

50.2%

105 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

22%

23 of 106 offers

How close you had to live

Gordon's School filled its places in 2024, and 1,532m — 0.95 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 7 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.95 mi

1,532 metres, 2024

Under criterion

7

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

978

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

619

63.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

359

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

195

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 Gordon's 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 Gordon's School reported 359 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 63.3% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Gordon's School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 629 places 745 on roll 2013/14 655 places 750 on roll 2014/15 655 places 736 on roll 2015/16 655 places 742 on roll 2016/17 655 places 785 on roll 2017/18 790 places 831 on roll 2018/19 790 places 838 on roll 2020/21 775 places 921 on roll 2021/22 775 places 936 on roll 2022/23 795 places 946 on roll 2023/24 795 places 976 on roll 2024/25 1,173 places 979 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. Gordon's School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Gordon's School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
10 June 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3779

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 GU24 9PT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139151).

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.