School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Glenthorne High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 274 families who named Glenthorne High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 255 and 481 put it first.

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

1.89

first choices for every place available

481 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Glenthorne High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Glenthorne High 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 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

Glenthorne High 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 Glenthorne High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.62 per place 386 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.48 per place 371 first choices 250 places 2017/18 1.77 per place 456 first choices 257 places 2018/19 1.95 per place 496 first choices 255 places 2019/20 1.9 per place 483 first choices 254 places 2020/21 2.07 per place 582 first choices 281 places 2021/22 1.95 per place 560 first choices 287 places 2022/23 1.76 per place 490 first choices 279 places 2023/24 2.19 per place 531 first choices 243 places 2024/25 1.96 per place 467 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.86 per place 442 first choices 237 places 2026/27 1.89 per place 481 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Glenthorne High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 481 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Glenthorne High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 386 196 1.62
2016/17 250 371 206 1.48
2017/18 257 456 213 1.77
2018/19 255 496 216 1.95
2019/20 254 483 217 1.9
2020/21 281 582 249 2.07
2021/22 287 560 233 1.95
2022/23 279 490 234 1.76
2023/24 243 531 209 2.19
2024/25 238 467 198 1.96
2025/26 237 442 191 1.86
2026/27 255 481 207 1.89

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

481

2,001 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

43%

207 of 481

Offers to families outside the council

20%

52 of 255 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

1,321

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,401

106.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

80

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

323

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 Glenthorne High 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 Glenthorne High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Glenthorne High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,450 places 1,351 on roll 2012/13 1,450 places 1,386 on roll 2013/14 1,450 places 1,447 on roll 2014/15 1,450 places 1,471 on roll 2015/16 1,450 places 1,514 on roll 2016/17 1,558 places 1,520 on roll 2017/18 1,558 places 1,536 on roll 2018/19 1,558 places 1,569 on roll 2020/21 1,558 places 1,628 on roll 2021/22 1,558 places 1,671 on roll 2022/23 1,644 places 1,711 on roll 2023/24 1,644 places 1,752 on roll 2024/25 1,644 places 1,783 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Glenthorne High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Glenthorne High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 September 2022 Arrangements did not comply REF4086

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 SM3 9PS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136914).

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.