School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woolmer Hill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Woolmer Hill School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 193 and 222 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

222 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woolmer Hill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woolmer Hill 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

Woolmer Hill 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 Woolmer Hill 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 0.66 per place 77 first choices 117 places 2016/17 0.7 per place 74 first choices 105 places 2017/18 0.74 per place 93 first choices 126 places 2018/19 0.79 per place 137 first choices 173 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 172 first choices 189 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 207 first choices 184 places 2021/22 1 per place 194 first choices 194 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 210 first choices 194 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 234 first choices 192 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 195 first choices 192 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 187 first choices 196 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 222 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at Woolmer Hill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 222 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woolmer Hill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 117 77 77 0.66
2016/17 105 74 74 0.7
2017/18 126 93 93 0.74
2018/19 173 137 135 0.79
2019/20 189 172 162 0.91
2020/21 184 207 177 1.12
2021/22 194 194 184 1
2022/23 194 210 187 1.08
2023/24 192 234 187 1.22
2024/25 192 195 182 1.02
2025/26 196 187 184 0.95
2026/27 193 222 188 1.15

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

222

491 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.7%

188 of 222

Offers to families outside the council

33%

63 of 193 offers

How close you had to live

Woolmer Hill School filled its places in 2024, and 5,277m — 3.28 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 6 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.28 mi

5,277 metres, 2024

Under criterion

6

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

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 Woolmer Hill 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 Woolmer Hill School reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.3% 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 Woolmer Hill School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 657 on roll 2012/13 750 places 637 on roll 2013/14 750 places 587 on roll 2014/15 750 places 536 on roll 2015/16 750 places 528 on roll 2016/17 750 places 505 on roll 2017/18 750 places 473 on roll 2018/19 750 places 541 on roll 2020/21 810 places 684 on roll 2021/22 810 places 780 on roll 2022/23 810 places 855 on roll 2023/24 900 places 886 on roll 2024/25 900 places 894 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 GU27 1QB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137314).

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.