School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thamesmead School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Thamesmead School as their first choice did not get a place: 175 put it first and 157 of them were offered one.

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

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

175 first preferences for 216 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thamesmead School

There is no published appeal success rate for Thamesmead 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

Thamesmead School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 5 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 Thamesmead 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 1.17 per place 243 first choices 207 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 276 first choices 205 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 228 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 230 first choices 218 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 202 first choices 211 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 165 first choices 222 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 200 first choices 225 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 179 first choices 236 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 187 first choices 226 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 199 first choices 213 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 201 first choices 217 places 2026/27 0.81 per place 175 first choices 216 places
First preferences per place at Thamesmead School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 216 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thamesmead School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 207 243 181 1.17
2016/17 205 276 194 1.35
2017/18 205 228 171 1.11
2018/19 218 230 194 1.06
2019/20 211 202 175 0.96
2020/21 222 165 159 0.74
2021/22 225 200 175 0.89
2022/23 236 179 164 0.76
2023/24 226 187 171 0.83
2024/25 213 199 160 0.93
2025/26 217 201 158 0.93
2026/27 216 175 157 0.81

Places offered

216

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

760 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.7%

157 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 216 offers

How close you had to live

Every applicant was offered a place at Thamesmead School 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.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Thamesmead School published for 2025 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 Thamesmead School, 2025 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 and Previously Looked After Children Looked after and previously looked after children will be considered to be:
• children who are in the care of a local authority or provided with accommodation by a local authority in accordance with Section 22 of the Children Act 1989, e.g. fostered or living in a children’s home, at the time an application for a school is made; and
• children who have previously been in the care of a local authority or provided with accommodation by a local authority in accordance with Section 22 of the Children Act 1989 and who have left that care through adoption, a child arrangements order (in accordance with Section 8 of the Children Act 1989 and as amended by the Children and Families Act 2014) or special guardianship order (in accordance with Section 14A of the Children Act 1989); and
• children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. A child will be regarded as having been in state care outside of England if they were accommodated by a public authority, a religious organisation or any other provider of care whose sole purpose is to benefit society. The parent/carer will need to provide evidence to demonstrate that the child was in state care outside of England and left that care as a result of being adopted.
2 Sibling Where the child:
• at the time of admission has a brother or sister at Thamesmead who is another child of the same parents, (including children adopted by both parents) whether living at the same address or not, or
• at the time of admission has a brother or sister at Thamesmead who is a half-brother or sister or a step- brother or sister, or foster child, living at the same address, or
• has a brother or sister, half-brother or sister or a step-brother or sister, or foster child, who has been a former student at Thamesmead within 5 years of the anticipated date of entry. 3. Feeder Schools Where the child attends either of the two Shepperton Primary Feeder Schools, St. Nicholas Church of England Primary School or Saxon Primary School.
3 Performing Arts Thamesmead School will offer up to a maximum of 10% of admissions on aptitude in performing arts, i.e. maximum of 21 places being offered under Drama and/or Music in the September 2025 Year 7 intake. Applicants will be prioritised by a score system following aptitude testing. If you are applying for your child under Drama and/or Music you must complete a Year 7 Performing Arts Supplementary Application Form and return it to the school by 12 noon, Friday, 11th October 2024 at the latest indicating which subject or subjects you are applying under. This is in addition to completing the Local Authority Application Form. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Children of Staff at the school Where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or The member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. Note: A person will be child’s parent for the purpose of this criterion if they are living in the same family unit as the child at the same address and are:
• Their mother or father
• Any other person who has parental responsibility, such as an adoptive parent, step-parent, a special guardian or person names in a child arrangements order
• Any other person who does not have parental responsibility but otherwise has the care of the child, such as a foster carer A member of staff applying under this criterion should obtain a Staff Supplementary Form from the Admissions Officer, or via our website. The completed form for the September 2025 Year 7 intake must be returned to the school by Friday 25th October 2024 at the latest. This is in addition to completing the Local Authority Application Form.
5 Local Proximity Where a child does not attend a Shepperton primary School but permanently resides within the Shepperton Post Code area of TW17. NB: Evidence of proof of residency will be requested.
6 Proximity Proximity of the child's permanent home to the School. Information to Note:
7 Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) that named the school are given priority outside the oversubscription criteria.

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 2025 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.

Thamesmead School's determined admission arrangements for 2025 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,046

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Thamesmead 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 Thamesmead School reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thamesmead School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,007 places 999 on roll 2012/13 1,007 places 1,010 on roll 2013/14 1,007 places 1,015 on roll 2014/15 1,007 places 1,005 on roll 2015/16 1,007 places 1,006 on roll 2016/17 1,007 places 1,012 on roll 2017/18 1,007 places 1,017 on roll 2018/19 1,007 places 1,012 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,007 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,014 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,039 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,046 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 TW17 9EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137237).

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.