School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The John Fisher School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named The John Fisher School as their first choice did not get a place: 132 put it first and 116 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.

16

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

132 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The John Fisher School

There is no published appeal success rate for The John Fisher 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

The John Fisher School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 8 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 The John Fisher 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 1.08 per place 171 first choices 158 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 182 first choices 187 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 175 first choices 186 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 207 first choices 187 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 173 first choices 188 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 178 first choices 184 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 176 first choices 186 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 188 first choices 176 places 2023/24 0.67 per place 118 first choices 176 places 2024/25 0.86 per place 151 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 156 first choices 178 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 132 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at The John Fisher School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 132 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The John Fisher School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 171 127 1.08
2016/17 187 182 154 0.97
2017/18 186 175 157 0.94
2018/19 187 207 142 1.11
2019/20 188 173 147 0.92
2020/21 184 178 147 0.97
2021/22 186 176 142 0.95
2022/23 176 188 149 1.07
2023/24 176 118 118 0.67
2024/25 175 151 135 0.86
2025/26 178 156 132 0.88
2026/27 175 132 116 0.75

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

132

468 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.9%

116 of 132

Offers to families outside the council

52%

91 of 175 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

1,005

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

918

91.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

87

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

260

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 John Fisher 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 John Fisher School reported 87 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.3% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The John Fisher School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,056 places 1,023 on roll 2010/11 1,056 places 1,011 on roll 2011/12 1,065 places 1,001 on roll 2012/13 1,072 places 1,006 on roll 2013/14 1,072 places 1,032 on roll 2014/15 1,072 places 1,029 on roll 2015/16 1,072 places 1,012 on roll 2016/17 1,265 places 1,037 on roll 2017/18 1,265 places 1,059 on roll 2018/19 1,265 places 1,107 on roll 2020/21 1,265 places 1,161 on roll 2021/22 1,265 places 1,192 on roll 2022/23 1,265 places 1,163 on roll 2023/24 1,265 places 1,154 on roll 2024/25 1,265 places 1,131 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. The John Fisher School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The John Fisher School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 September 2011 Arrangements did not comply ADA2199

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sutton

Postcode CR8 3YP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103009).

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.