School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Andrew's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 142 families who named St Andrew's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 378 put it first.

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

1.60

first choices for every place available

378 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Andrew's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Andrew's Catholic 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

St Andrew's Catholic 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 St Andrew's Catholic 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 1.48 per place 217 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.3 per place 268 first choices 206 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 258 first choices 222 places 2018/19 1.27 per place 336 first choices 265 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 352 first choices 281 places 2020/21 1.64 per place 340 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.37 per place 327 first choices 239 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 287 first choices 235 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 283 first choices 238 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 288 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 321 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.6 per place 378 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at St Andrew's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 378 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Andrew's Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 217 137 1.48
2016/17 206 268 197 1.3
2017/18 222 258 214 1.16
2018/19 265 336 256 1.27
2019/20 281 352 272 1.25
2020/21 207 340 205 1.64
2021/22 239 327 231 1.37
2022/23 235 287 226 1.22
2023/24 238 283 225 1.19
2024/25 239 288 230 1.21
2025/26 234 321 232 1.37
2026/27 236 378 236 1.6

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

378

758 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

62.4%

236 of 378

Offers to families outside the council

5%

11 of 236 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 125275.

How close you had to live

St Andrew's Catholic School filled its places in 2024, and 1,117m — 0.69 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 12 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.69 mi

1,117 metres, 2024

Under criterion

12

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

1,176

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

322

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 St Andrew's Catholic 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 St Andrew's Catholic School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Andrew's Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 819 places 764 on roll 2010/11 819 places 808 on roll 2011/12 819 places 814 on roll 2012/13 819 places 865 on roll 2013/14 900 places 922 on roll 2014/15 900 places 1,002 on roll 2015/16 900 places 1,041 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,108 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,181 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,295 on roll 2020/21 1,240 places 1,452 on roll 2021/22 1,240 places 1,485 on roll 2022/23 1,341 places 1,515 on roll 2023/24 1,522 places 1,572 on roll 2024/25 1,522 places 1,594 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Surrey

Postcode KT22 7JP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151611).

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.