School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Bishop Wand Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 86 families who named The Bishop Wand Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 211 and 282 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

282 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Bishop Wand Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Bishop Wand Church of England 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

The Bishop Wand Church of England 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 The Bishop Wand Church of England 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 1.08 per place 189 first choices 175 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 179 first choices 176 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 219 first choices 173 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 264 first choices 187 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 213 first choices 188 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 262 first choices 185 places 2021/22 1.24 per place 231 first choices 186 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 216 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 223 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 286 first choices 212 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 285 first choices 211 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 282 first choices 211 places
First preferences per place at The Bishop Wand Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 282 first preferences for 211 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Bishop Wand Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 175 189 143 1.08
2016/17 176 179 143 1.02
2017/18 173 219 151 1.27
2018/19 187 264 174 1.41
2019/20 188 213 163 1.13
2020/21 185 262 176 1.42
2021/22 186 231 162 1.24
2022/23 206 216 178 1.05
2023/24 210 223 174 1.06
2024/25 212 286 189 1.35
2025/26 211 285 185 1.35
2026/27 211 282 196 1.34

Places offered

211

in 2026/27

Named first choice

282

748 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.5%

196 of 282

Offers to families outside the council

11%

23 of 211 offers

How close you had to live

The Bishop Wand Church of England School filled its places in 2024, and 5,884m — 3.66 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 3 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.66 mi

5,884 metres, 2024

Under criterion

3

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

1,142

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,003

87.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

139

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

145

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 The Bishop Wand Church of England 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 The Bishop Wand Church of England School reported 139 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.8% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Bishop Wand Church of England School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,017 places 991 on roll 2013/14 1,017 places 1,019 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,038 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,008 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,025 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,017 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,007 on roll 2020/21 1,057 places 1,083 on roll 2021/22 1,057 places 1,106 on roll 2022/23 1,057 places 1,139 on roll 2023/24 1,057 places 1,182 on roll 2024/25 1,287 places 1,200 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 TW16 6LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138491).

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.