School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 94 families who named St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 228 and 321 put it first.

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

1.41

first choices for every place available

321 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking

There is no published appeal success rate for St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking, 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 John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking 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 John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking, 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 1.38 per place 256 first choices 185 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 235 first choices 174 places 2017/18 1.38 per place 260 first choices 188 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 296 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 311 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.33 per place 309 first choices 232 places 2021/22 1.51 per place 352 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.48 per place 340 first choices 230 places 2023/24 1.44 per place 334 first choices 232 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 292 first choices 228 places 2025/26 1.45 per place 339 first choices 233 places 2026/27 1.41 per place 321 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 321 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 185 256 184 1.38
2016/17 174 235 173 1.35
2017/18 188 260 185 1.38
2018/19 235 296 233 1.26
2019/20 236 311 233 1.32
2020/21 232 309 230 1.33
2021/22 233 352 233 1.51
2022/23 230 340 228 1.48
2023/24 232 334 229 1.44
2024/25 228 292 223 1.28
2025/26 233 339 231 1.45
2026/27 228 321 227 1.41

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

321

746 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.7%

227 of 321

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 228 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 125302.

How close you had to live

Every applicant was offered a place at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking in 2024. That is the most recent round Surrey has published, and it means there was no cut-off that year — nobody was turned away for living too far, so no distance exists to be measured against.

Last place offered at

No cut-off

everyone who applied was offered, 2024

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because of how far from the school you live, and cannot allow it because you live close by. No cut-off applied here in any round Surrey has published — the school offered a place to everyone who asked for one. 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.

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

1,202

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking 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 John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking 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 1,036 places 1,247 on roll 2010/11 1,036 places 1,253 on roll 2011/12 1,118 places 1,242 on roll 2012/13 1,118 places 1,247 on roll 2013/14 1,118 places 1,230 on roll 2014/15 1,118 places 1,233 on roll 2015/16 1,118 places 1,229 on roll 2016/17 1,118 places 1,243 on roll 2017/18 1,268 places 1,277 on roll 2018/19 1,598 places 1,309 on roll 2020/21 1,540 places 1,426 on roll 2021/22 1,540 places 1,470 on roll 2022/23 1,600 places 1,501 on roll 2023/24 1,600 places 1,524 on roll 2024/25 1,600 places 1,536 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 GU22 9AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143369).

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.