School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bede's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 158 families who named St Bede's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 316 and 469 put it first.

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

1.48

first choices for every place available

469 first preferences for 316 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bede's School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bede'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

St Bede'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 St Bede's School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 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 1.07 per place 317 first choices 295 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 298 first choices 295 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 355 first choices 304 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 455 first choices 313 places 2019/20 1.33 per place 445 first choices 335 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 446 first choices 335 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 428 first choices 335 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 471 first choices 331 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 447 first choices 326 places 2024/25 1.47 per place 488 first choices 332 places 2025/26 1.41 per place 464 first choices 330 places 2026/27 1.48 per place 469 first choices 316 places
First preferences per place at St Bede's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 469 first preferences for 316 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bede'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
2015/16 295 317 277 1.07
2016/17 295 298 271 1.01
2017/18 304 355 292 1.17
2018/19 313 455 306 1.45
2019/20 335 445 323 1.33
2020/21 335 446 325 1.33
2021/22 335 428 318 1.28
2022/23 331 471 324 1.42
2023/24 326 447 319 1.37
2024/25 332 488 327 1.47
2025/26 330 464 317 1.41
2026/27 316 469 311 1.48

Places offered

316

in 2026/27

Named first choice

469

936 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.3%

311 of 469

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 of 316 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Bede's School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for St Bede's School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children or previously looked after children (see note 1); II. Children with an exceptional and professionally supported medical or social need for a place at this school (see note 2); III. Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) at a Christian Church (see note 5) with a sibling (see note 6) attending St Bede’s at the time of admission and living inside the catchment area (see note 7); IV. Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) at a Christian Church (see note 5) with a sibling (see note 6) attending St Bede’s at the time of admission and living outside the catchment area (see note 7);
2 Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) at a Christian Church (see note 5) living inside the catchment area (see note 7); VI. Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) at a Christian Church (see note 5) living outside the catchment area (see note 7); VII. Children with a sibling (see note 6) attending St Bede’s at the time of admission and living inside the catchment area (see notes 7); VIII. Children with a sibling (see note 6) attending St Bede’s at the time of admission and living outside the catchment area (see notes 7); […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Looked after children or previously looked after children (see note 1); II. Children with an exceptional and professionally supported medical or social need for a place at this school (see note 2); III. Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) of a non-Christian faith community (see note 9) with a sibling (see note 6) attending the school at the time of admission; IV. Children whose parent/carer is a regular worshipper (see note 4) of a non-Christian faith community (see note 9);
4 Children who will have a sibling (see note 6) attending the school at the time of admission; VI. Any other applicant. Other information regarding Foundation Places/Open Places: If there are fewer than 135 qualified applicants for Church of England foundation places any unfilled places will become additional Catholic Church foundation places. Similarly if there are fewer than 135 qualified applicants for Catholic foundation places any unfilled places will become additional Church of England foundation places. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

St Bede's School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,649

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,647

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

310

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 Bede'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 St Bede's School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Bede's School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,650 places 1,733 on roll 2010/11 1,650 places 1,673 on roll 2011/12 1,644 places 1,647 on roll 2012/13 1,644 places 1,663 on roll 2013/14 1,644 places 1,656 on roll 2014/15 1,644 places 1,648 on roll 2015/16 1,644 places 1,702 on roll 2016/17 1,674 places 1,706 on roll 2017/18 1,704 places 1,718 on roll 2018/19 2,004 places 1,746 on roll 2020/21 1,955 places 1,859 on roll 2021/22 1,955 places 1,884 on roll 2022/23 1,952 places 1,922 on roll 2023/24 1,959 places 1,970 on roll 2024/25 1,959 places 1,948 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Surrey

Postcode RH1 2LQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 125278).

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.