School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Matthew Arnold School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 72 families who named The Matthew Arnold School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 246 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

246 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Matthew Arnold School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Matthew Arnold 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 Matthew Arnold School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Matthew Arnold 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 0.55 per place 90 first choices 163 places 2016/17 0.65 per place 91 first choices 141 places 2017/18 0.56 per place 104 first choices 187 places 2018/19 0.53 per place 94 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.45 per place 92 first choices 204 places 2020/21 0.72 per place 145 first choices 201 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 165 first choices 200 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 245 first choices 201 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 234 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.55 per place 277 first choices 179 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 252 first choices 187 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 246 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at The Matthew Arnold School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 246 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Matthew Arnold School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 163 90 90 0.55
2016/17 141 91 91 0.65
2017/18 187 104 104 0.56
2018/19 178 94 94 0.53
2019/20 204 92 92 0.45
2020/21 201 145 145 0.72
2021/22 200 165 165 0.82
2022/23 201 245 189 1.22
2023/24 202 234 184 1.16
2024/25 179 277 167 1.55
2025/26 187 252 152 1.35
2026/27 192 246 174 1.28

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

246

611 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.7%

174 of 246

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 192 offers

How close you had to live

The Matthew Arnold School filled its places in 2024, and 1,779m — 1.11 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.11 mi

1,779 metres, 2024

Under criterion

4

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

980

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

956

97.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

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 The Matthew Arnold 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 Matthew Arnold School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.6% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Matthew Arnold School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,029 places 941 on roll 2013/14 1,029 places 921 on roll 2014/15 1,029 places 864 on roll 2015/16 1,029 places 799 on roll 2016/17 1,029 places 713 on roll 2017/18 1,029 places 655 on roll 2018/19 1,029 places 679 on roll 2020/21 980 places 771 on roll 2021/22 980 places 861 on roll 2022/23 980 places 966 on roll 2023/24 980 places 971 on roll 2024/25 980 places 956 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 TW18 1PF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138765).

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.