Richard Challoner School
Kingston upon Thames, KT3 5PE · Kingston upon Thames local authority
Kingston upon Thames’s School Grade A+ better than 95% of towns in England
What stands out about Richard Challoner School
- Its own letter, A: GCSE results better than 93% of England’s secondary schools
- 75% get grade 5 or above in English and maths, 28 points above England’s schools
- Over capacity: 1,079 pupils for 966 places
- 10% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (fewer than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted: Outstanding, November 2022 (shown, not graded)
- 59% of families who put it first got a place for September 2026 (138 of 234)
- Progress 8 of +0.84 in 2023/24, the last year DfE published it: pupils did better at GCSE than pupils nationally with the same results at 11
- Homes in its postcode sector (KT3 5) sold for a median £674,000; Kingston upon Thames’s is £550,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 160 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Richard Challoner beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 60.5
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 92% of schools · Kingston upon Thames avg 60.2
Grade 5+ in English and maths 75%
A strong pass · higher than 93% of schools · Kingston upon Thames avg 69%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
+0.84: above average. How pupils did at GCSE against pupils nationally with the same results at 11. Not published since 2023/24 (no Key Stage 2 tests in 2020 and 2021).
Disadvantaged pupils, 2025/26
Attainment 8 for the 17 pupils DfE counts as disadvantaged (free school meals in the last 6 years, or looked after) and the rest, beside England’s schools
England’s figures are of its graded mainstream state schools, each school counted once; grammar schools are included, which is why the right-hand tail is long. Small cohorts are suppressed.
How hard is it to get a place at Richard Challoner School?
59% of the families who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (74), 2020 (84), 2021 (65), 2022 (85), 2023 (95), 2024 (81), 2025 (60), 2026 (96). The council runs the coordinated admissions; each school’s rules (siblings, distance, faith) decide who gets in. DfE doesn’t publish the furthest distance offered, so check the council’s admissions booklet for that. Christ the Redeemer Catholic Education Trust sets the admissions rules. Apply through Kingston upon Thames council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
59% got their first choice
Kingston upon Thames and Kingston upon Thames, side by side
2025/26All 11 graded secondaries in Kingston upon Thames. Schools with more pupils on free school meals usually score lower, so a school above the crowd for its free school meals is doing better than its intake predicts. Kingston upon Thames’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Tiffin Girls' School | A+ | 7% | 86 |
| Tiffin School | A+ | 3% | 83.1 |
| The Kingston Academy | A+ | 13% | 64.6 |
| Richard Challoner School | A | 10% | 60.5 |
| The Holy Cross School | A | 13% | 58.4 |
| Coombe Girls' School | A | 22% | 57.2 |
| Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form | A− | 18% | 55 |
| The Hollyfield School and Sixth Form Centre | A− | 25% | 54.6 |
| Coombe Boys' School | A− | 17% | 53.2 |
| Southborough High School | B | 24% | 47.2 |
| Chessington School | C | 30% | 42.3 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 20251,078 pupils. SEN support is extra help in school for a special educational need; an EHC plan is the council’s legal plan for pupils who need more.
Girls and boys
Richard Challoner School’s letter
Its own results against England’s schools, not the town’s School Grade.
How school letters are worked out
Each school’s measure is compared with every graded school in England of the same phase: for primaries, the share of pupils meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths (DfE’s three-year average); for secondaries, Attainment 8 and the share with grade 5 or above in English and maths, each turned into a z-score against England’s schools and averaged. The letter comes from the share of those schools it beats, in the same bands as every grade on the site. The same method gives U.S. schools their letters, against their own state.
Graded: England’s open mainstream state schools with published results (grammar schools included, which select by test). Not graded: special schools, alternative provision, nurseries, 16–19 colleges, UTCs and studio schools, Welsh schools. Ofsted plays no part.
Ofsted inspections
Shown, not graded: Ofsted is never part of a letter or the School Grade.
Graded inspection: Outstanding, November 2022.
Living near Richard Challoner School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in KT3 5, the school’s postcode sector
Kingston upon Thames property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in KT3 5 sell for well over Kingston upon Thames’s typical price. HM Land Registry Price Paid, standard sales. Catchments aren’t published, so the postcode sector stands in for “around the school”.
Schools within 1.6 miles
29 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗Kingston upon Thames, KT3 5PE
Richard Challoner School: common questions
Is Richard Challoner School a good school?
By its published results, well above average: its GCSE results are better than 93% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is A), with an Attainment 8 of 60.5 and 75% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: Outstanding, November 2022.
How hard is it to get into Richard Challoner School?
For September 2026, 234 families put Richard Challoner School first and 138 of them were offered a place; 150 places were offered in all.
What is Richard Challoner School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection outcome is Outstanding (November 2022).
How much do houses cost near Richard Challoner School?
Homes in its postcode sector, KT3 5, sold for a median £674,000 over the 36 months to August 2026 (245 sales).
Sources: DfE Get Information about Schools (16 October 2026), Key Stage 2 performance tables (2023–2025, three-year average) and Key Stage 4 (2025/26, provisional); Ofsted state-funded school inspections as at 30 September 2026. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Also: DfE Key Stage 4 performance, schools data (2023/24 and 2024/25 final, 2025/26 provisional) and Key Stage 2 performance tables 2024/25 by subject; DfE school census, January 2025; DfE school-level applications and offers, September 2019 to 2026 entry; HM Land Registry Price Paid by postcode sector, 2010 to August 2026.
A school’s letter is our own summary of its published results against England’s schools of the same phase; Kingston upon Thames’s School Grade is a separate grade, built from the results of the schools in and around the town against other towns. Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.