The Beacon School
Tadworth and Epsom Downs, SM7 1AG · Surrey local authority
Tadworth and Epsom Downs’s School Grade A better than 93% of towns in England
What stands out about The Beacon School
- Its own letter, C+: GCSE results better than 39% of England’s secondary schools
- Room to spare: 959 pupils for 1,350 places
- 19% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (fewer than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted report card, June 2026: achievement expected standard, safeguarding met (shown, not graded)
- Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026 (148 of 148)
- Progress 8 of -0.14 in 2023/24, the last year DfE published it: pupils did about as well at GCSE as pupils nationally with the same results at 11
- Homes in its postcode sector (SM7 1) sold for a median £717,500; Tadworth and Epsom Downs’s is £587,250
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 205 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools The Beacon beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 42.7
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 31% of schools · Surrey avg 51.8
Grade 5+ in English and maths 44%
A strong pass · higher than 48% of schools · Surrey avg 56%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
-0.14: about 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 33 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 The Beacon School?
Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (38), 2020 (44), 2021 (13), 2022 (13). 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. Glf Schools sets the admissions rules. Apply through Surrey council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
100% got their first choice
Tadworth and Epsom Downs and Surrey, side by side
2025/26All 56 graded secondaries in Surrey. 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. Tadworth and Epsom Downs’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Andrew's Catholic School | A+ | 6% | 65.4 |
| Gordon's School | A+ | 3% | 64.8 |
| Hinchley Wood School | A | 7% | 63 |
| St Peter's Catholic School | A | 7% | 62.5 |
| Rosebery School | A | 7% | 61.6 |
| Weydon School | A | 8% | 61.2 |
| Salesian School, Chertsey | A | 8% | 61.2 |
| St John the Baptist Catholic Comprehensive School, Woking | A | 8% | 60.5 |
| George Abbot School | A | 12% | 60.4 |
| St Paul's Catholic College | A | 13% | 60 |
| St Bede's School | A | 6% | 59.5 |
| Guildford County School | A | 10% | 59.2 |
| Woolmer Hill School | A | 11% | 58.9 |
| Heathside School | A | 9% | 57.1 |
| Howard of Effingham School | A | 11% | 56.7 |
| Glebelands School | A− | 14% | 56.5 |
| Glyn School | A | 8% | 56.4 |
| Cobham Free School | A | 15% | 56 |
| All Hallows Catholic School | A | 15% | 55.6 |
| Broadwater School | A− | 19% | 55.3 |
| The Ashcombe School | A− | 12% | 55.2 |
| Tomlinscote School | A− | 7% | 54.9 |
| Rodborough | A | 13% | 54.7 |
| Royal Alexandra and Albert School | A− | 11% | 54.5 |
| Thamesmead School | A− | 17% | 52.7 |
| Ash Manor School | B+ | 19% | 51.8 |
| The Bishop Wand Church of England School | A− | 10% | 51.7 |
| Woking High School | B+ | 19% | 51.4 |
| Reigate School | A− | 20% | 51.3 |
| The Winston Churchill School A Specialist Sports College | B+ | 19% | 51.1 |
| Blenheim High School | B+ | 16% | 51.1 |
| Farnham Heath End | B+ | 19% | 51.1 |
| Esher Church of England High School | B | 21% | 50 |
| Fullbrook School | B+ | 14% | 49.8 |
| Collingwood College | B | 17% | 49.5 |
| Therfield School | B+ | 20% | 48.9 |
| The Matthew Arnold School | B | 21% | 48.8 |
| Hoe Valley School | B+ | 25% | 48.3 |
| The Bishop David Brown School | B | 29% | 48.1 |
| Merstham Park School | B | 28% | 47.4 |
| Warlingham School | C+ | 21% | 46.8 |
| Kings College Guildford | B− | 28% | 46.8 |
| de Stafford School | C+ | 27% | 45.3 |
| Carrington School | C+ | 29% | 44.8 |
| The Magna Carta School | C+ | 25% | 44.7 |
| Chertsey High School | B− | 19% | 44.7 |
| Oxted School | C+ | 19% | 43.6 |
| The Beacon School | C+ | 19% | 42.7 |
| Three Rivers Academy | C+ | 27% | 42.6 |
| Jubilee High School | C+ | 29% | 42.5 |
| Oakwood School | C− | 17% | 41.9 |
| Christ's College, Guildford | C | 24% | 41.7 |
| Kings International College | C− | 23% | 40.2 |
| The Priory Church of England School | C− | 18% | 39.9 |
| Epsom and Ewell High School | C− | 23% | 39.4 |
| Thomas Knyvett College | D | 40% | 38.7 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 20251,022 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
The Beacon 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.
Report card, inspection starting June 2026.
Before the report card: Graded inspection: Requires improvement, May 2023.
Living near The Beacon School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in SM7 1, the school’s postcode sector
Tadworth and Epsom Downs property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in SM7 1 sell for well over Tadworth and Epsom Downs’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
7 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗
Tadworth and Epsom Downs, SM7 1AG
The Beacon School: common questions
Is The Beacon School a good school?
By its published results, below average: its GCSE results are better than 39% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is C+), with an Attainment 8 of 42.7 and 44% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: a report card in June 2026.
How hard is it to get into The Beacon School?
For September 2026, 148 families put The Beacon School first and all of them were offered a place; 243 places were offered in all.
What is The Beacon School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection (June 2026) gave a report card: achievement expected standard, safeguarding met. Ofsted stopped giving one-word overall grades in September 2024.
How much do houses cost near The Beacon School?
Homes in its postcode sector, SM7 1, sold for a median £717,500 over the 36 months to August 2026 (224 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; Tadworth and Epsom Downs’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.