ACS International School Cobham

What the accreditor confirms

The International Baccalaureate organisation lists ACS Cobham as an authorised IB World School for the Diploma Programme, with authorisation dated 24 October 1986, and records the school as operating since 1975. These are longevity and programme-authorisation signals rather than an independent judgement of quality.

Third-party description

An independent school-directory review identifies ACS Cobham as one of the three ACS International Schools in the UK and describes it as an international day-and-boarding school on a 128-acre Surrey site. This is descriptive third-party coverage, not a ranking or proof of prestige.

How the school says it admits

The school states that it has no entrance examination and uses a holistic review of records, references, questionnaires and standardised-test information. It operates rolling admissions but says an otherwise successful applicant will be waitlisted if the requested grade or programme is at capacity, and it does not publish an acceptance rate or annual applicant count.

Its January 2025 application procedure requires Grades 5-12 applicants to provide three years of school records, parent and student questionnaires, and two teacher references. Grade 7 applicants may be required to undertake EAL testing, while Grades 8-12 applicants must provide available EAL results such as IELTS or Cambridge PET/FCE, with further EAL testing possible.

English requirements for boarding entrants

For international-speaking boarding applicants, the school's boarding English-tuition document states that passing the Oxford Placement Test is a condition of enrolment. It lists grade-dependent English benchmarks, from Grade 8 at B1/PET/IELTS 3.5-4.5 to Grade 12 at C1/CAE/IELTS 7, and says a conditional offer may be made subject to completing preparation and subsequently passing the test.

What the numbers do and do not show

The independent February 2025 inspection records 1,269 pupils, including 197 boarders across two boarding houses (ages 13-16 and 16-18), but publishes no acceptance rate, admissions-test process, priority criteria, capacity figure or waiting-list total.

No published acceptance rate, grade-specific waiting-list count or documented admissions-priority order was located in the sources searched, which were the public DfE register, the ISI inspection report, the school's application procedure and boarding-language material, and established-directory results. The available evidence therefore does not support characterising admission as selective or quantifying demand; it does not establish that no such figures exist elsewhere.

Size and boarding over time

The Independent Schools Inspectorate recorded 1,269 pupils, including 197 boarders, in February 2025. Earlier inspections recorded 1,387 pupils with 152 boarders in March 2019, and 1,193 pupils with 152 boarders in March 2022.

The 2019 and 2022 reports described pupils and boarders as coming from the UK and a range of international families, with many then living within a 25-mile radius of the school.

Nationality mix as reported by the school

The school reports a cohort composition of 30% British/local, 17% American and 53% other nationalities. Its admissions pages use varying nationality counts, citing both more than 65 and over 77 nationalities. These figures are the school's own and the differing counts are noted here rather than reconciled.

Results as published by the school

For the Class of 2026, ACS Cobham published an IBDP average of 35/45, a highest score of 43/45 and 28% of students scoring 38 or above. It also reported 211 students sitting 551 AP examinations, with an average score of 3.7/5 and 92% of examinations scoring 3 or above. These figures are self-reported by the school.

University destinations

The school's University Destinations 2024 + 2025 page names institutions attended or selected as destinations, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London, University of Chicago, New York University and University of Toronto. The page gives no student counts, cohort size or annual allocation, so these should be read as destinations rather than matriculation counts.

Leadership change

According to the school's own announcement, ACS named Robert Crowther as the new Head of School on 26 November 2024. The announcement states that he succeeded Barnaby Sandow, who had left earlier in 2024. The evidence records only the appointment and the predecessor's departure; it does not address any effects of the transition, and no independent source was located in this review.

Results and award as listed by the school

The school published Class of 2026 IB and AP results on its own website, including a 35/45 IBDP average and 92% of AP examinations scoring 3 or above.

The school's homepage lists a National BSA Award for Supporting International Boarders dated 27 May 2026. An independent award-body confirmation was not located in this review.

Curriculum pathways

The school offers an English-language international pathway with a choice of IBDP, AP and the ACS High School Diploma. Families seeking a conventional UK A-level route should note that the published senior pathways do not include A-levels. This is a reading of the school's own curriculum page.

Boarding entry and cost

Boarding begins at Grade 8 (ages 13-14), not in the Lower School. Published annual 2026-27 boarding-and-tuition totals range from £56,940 for Grade 8 five-day boarding to £69,060 for Grade 12 seven-day boarding, before some additional costs such as external examinations.

Learning support limits

For learning support, the school says it serves mild-to-moderate needs subject to admissions requirements and available places, but cannot support severe behavioural, emotional or learning difficulties. Moderate SEN support is published at £4,740 per year and places are limited.