School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Greenshaw High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 252 families who named Greenshaw High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 332 and 455 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

455 first preferences for 332 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Greenshaw High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Greenshaw 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

Greenshaw 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 Greenshaw High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 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 1.34 per place 355 first choices 264 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 379 first choices 323 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 412 first choices 322 places 2018/19 1.2 per place 394 first choices 329 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 442 first choices 349 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 428 first choices 348 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 396 first choices 354 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 392 first choices 348 places 2023/24 1.18 per place 424 first choices 359 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 433 first choices 362 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 475 first choices 357 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 455 first choices 332 places
First preferences per place at Greenshaw High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 455 first preferences for 332 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Greenshaw 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
2015/16 264 355 163 1.34
2016/17 323 379 228 1.17
2017/18 322 412 233 1.28
2018/19 329 394 215 1.2
2019/20 349 442 242 1.27
2020/21 348 428 234 1.23
2021/22 354 396 215 1.12
2022/23 348 392 225 1.13
2023/24 359 424 200 1.18
2024/25 362 433 230 1.2
2025/26 357 475 232 1.33
2026/27 332 455 203 1.37

Places offered

332

in 2026/27

Named first choice

455

2,339 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

44.6%

203 of 455

Offers to families outside the council

18%

59 of 332 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

1,570

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,559

99.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 Greenshaw 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 Greenshaw High School reported 11 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 Greenshaw High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,510 places 1,584 on roll 2012/13 1,510 places 1,645 on roll 2013/14 1,510 places 1,668 on roll 2014/15 1,510 places 1,647 on roll 2015/16 1,670 places 1,648 on roll 2016/17 1,970 places 1,676 on roll 2017/18 1,970 places 1,744 on roll 2018/19 1,970 places 1,805 on roll 2020/21 1,970 places 1,887 on roll 2021/22 1,970 places 1,879 on roll 2022/23 1,970 places 1,882 on roll 2023/24 1,970 places 1,925 on roll 2024/25 1,970 places 1,949 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 SM1 3DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136800).

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.