School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Guildford County School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 68 families who named Guildford County School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 171 and 237 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

237 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Guildford County School

There is no published appeal success rate for Guildford County 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

Guildford County 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 Guildford County 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 1.33 per place 208 first choices 156 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 218 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.32 per place 236 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.42 per place 250 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.94 per place 347 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.79 per place 310 first choices 173 places 2021/22 1.78 per place 309 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.76 per place 310 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.56 per place 266 first choices 171 places 2024/25 1.56 per place 268 first choices 172 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 226 first choices 172 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 237 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at Guildford County School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 237 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Guildford County School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 156 208 132 1.33
2016/17 159 218 147 1.37
2017/18 179 236 154 1.32
2018/19 176 250 169 1.42
2019/20 179 347 168 1.94
2020/21 173 310 163 1.79
2021/22 174 309 170 1.78
2022/23 176 310 174 1.76
2023/24 171 266 163 1.56
2024/25 172 268 165 1.56
2025/26 172 226 166 1.31
2026/27 171 237 169 1.39

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

237

782 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.3%

169 of 237

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 171 offers

How close you had to live

Guildford County School filled its places in 2024, and 1,162m — 0.72 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.72 mi

1,162 metres, 2024

Under criterion

4

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

880

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

913

103.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

33

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Guildford County 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 Guildford County 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Guildford County School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,087 places 1,070 on roll 2013/14 1,087 places 1,009 on roll 2014/15 1,087 places 1,030 on roll 2015/16 1,087 places 1,040 on roll 2016/17 1,087 places 1,041 on roll 2017/18 1,187 places 1,053 on roll 2018/19 1,187 places 1,105 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,144 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,187 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,208 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,217 on roll 2024/25 1,120 places 1,197 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 GU2 4LU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139193).

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.