School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rosebery School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Rosebery School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 244 and 274 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

274 first preferences for 244 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rosebery School

There is no published appeal success rate for Rosebery 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

Rosebery School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 11 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 Rosebery 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 per place 238 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.45 per place 345 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 293 first choices 238 places 2018/19 1.27 per place 303 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 347 first choices 245 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 308 first choices 247 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 310 first choices 245 places 2022/23 1.52 per place 368 first choices 242 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 303 first choices 245 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 302 first choices 244 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 322 first choices 245 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 274 first choices 244 places
First preferences per place at Rosebery School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 274 first preferences for 244 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rosebery School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 238 214 1
2016/17 238 345 231 1.45
2017/18 238 293 229 1.23
2018/19 239 303 223 1.27
2019/20 245 347 235 1.42
2020/21 247 308 236 1.25
2021/22 245 310 232 1.27
2022/23 242 368 235 1.52
2023/24 245 303 235 1.24
2024/25 244 302 229 1.24
2025/26 245 322 232 1.31
2026/27 244 274 222 1.12

Places offered

244

in 2026/27

Named first choice

274

643 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81%

222 of 274

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 244 offers

How close you had to live

Rosebery School filled its places in 2024, and 2,675m — 1.66 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

1.66 mi

2,675 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,212

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

12

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

270

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 Rosebery 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 Rosebery 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 Rosebery School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,200 places 1,462 on roll 2012/13 1,550 places 1,456 on roll 2013/14 1,550 places 1,441 on roll 2014/15 1,550 places 1,472 on roll 2015/16 1,550 places 1,477 on roll 2016/17 1,550 places 1,463 on roll 2017/18 1,550 places 1,434 on roll 2018/19 1,550 places 1,446 on roll 2020/21 1,470 places 1,435 on roll 2021/22 1,470 places 1,445 on roll 2022/23 1,470 places 1,412 on roll 2023/24 1,470 places 1,419 on roll 2024/25 1,470 places 1,474 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 KT18 7NQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137736).

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.