School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Carshalton High School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named Carshalton High School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 195 put it first and 165 of them were offered one.

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

30

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

195 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Carshalton High School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Carshalton High School for Girls, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Sutton 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 Sutton, 7.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 42 of 534 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 Sutton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sutton 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

Carshalton High School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Carshalton High School for Girls, 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 0.54 per place 131 first choices 243 places 2016/17 0.56 per place 139 first choices 248 places 2017/18 0.62 per place 154 first choices 249 places 2018/19 0.73 per place 180 first choices 248 places 2019/20 0.73 per place 183 first choices 250 places 2020/21 0.72 per place 195 first choices 272 places 2021/22 0.63 per place 160 first choices 255 places 2022/23 0.55 per place 158 first choices 287 places 2023/24 0.57 per place 156 first choices 275 places 2024/25 0.7 per place 188 first choices 270 places 2025/26 0.67 per place 166 first choices 249 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 195 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at Carshalton High School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Carshalton High School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 243 131 121 0.54
2016/17 248 139 136 0.56
2017/18 249 154 143 0.62
2018/19 248 180 153 0.73
2019/20 250 183 157 0.73
2020/21 272 195 168 0.72
2021/22 255 160 139 0.63
2022/23 287 158 156 0.55
2023/24 275 156 151 0.57
2024/25 270 188 154 0.7
2025/26 249 166 140 0.67
2026/27 267 195 165 0.73

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

872 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.6%

165 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

13%

36 of 267 offers

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

1,380

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,268

91.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

112

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Carshalton High School for Girls 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 Carshalton High School for Girls reported 112 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.9% 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 Carshalton High School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,197 places 1,250 on roll 2012/13 1,197 places 1,272 on roll 2013/14 1,197 places 1,223 on roll 2014/15 1,197 places 1,184 on roll 2015/16 1,197 places 1,197 on roll 2016/17 1,347 places 1,211 on roll 2017/18 1,347 places 1,264 on roll 2018/19 1,450 places 1,334 on roll 2020/21 1,480 places 1,378 on roll 2021/22 1,480 places 1,420 on roll 2022/23 1,630 places 1,401 on roll 2023/24 1,630 places 1,407 on roll 2024/25 1,630 places 1,436 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
Sutton

Postcode SM5 2QX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136797).

Other contested secondary schools in Sutton

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.